SPECIAL: the genesis of Cyclops
by Minisinoo
Summary: Prequel, coming-of-age. We follow Scott Summers from just before his arrival at Westchester until the Senate Hearings at the start of the X-Men film.  Dark, intense, but a story of healing.  Sometimes sons & fathers choose each other. Winner of 3 awards.
1. Preface

_"**For I am sure that no man asketh mercy and grace with true meaning, but if mercy and grace be first given to him."**  
><em>**-Julian of Norwich, 1342-1413**

**WARNING & HISTORY  
><strong>

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><p>This is a story about healing.<p>

A story about hope, and kindness, and frustration, and triumph.

A story about a father and a son who choose each other.

A story about friends who take the worst with the best.

A story about a brutalized boy who becomes not just a man, but a leader.

It is, at its root, a _love_ story.

It's not a story about sex or prostitution or rape. It's not a story wherein romance solves all problems.

It is not "hurt-comfort" or "fuck him/her all better" fiction.

It pulls no punches and takes no prisoners. It gets hard and it gets real. And sometimes it gets ugly.

Life is like that.

Let me take you on a journey where, by the end, you might believe in miracles -

not the divine sort, but the kind rising from human compassion and simple strength of spirit.

Sometimes, good things do happen to deserving people.

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><p><em>Special: the genesis of Cyclops<em> is a "prequel" novel, which means events take place before _X-Men: the Movie_ and no knowledge of the X-Men is necessary to read and understand it. It uses Scott's _comics_ history imported into the movieverse and taken to a dark extreme. If not all the stories/chapters contain graphic descriptions of sex or violence (in fact, most won't), it's nonetheless **ADULT** due to overall subject matter. It's been estimated by UNICEF that as many as 100,000 children and teens in the US alone are involved in some kind of sex trade. Girls _and_ boys. Homeless, abandoned, and/or runaway kids turn to prostitution, at least part-time, for mere survival. Far from being unlikely, Scott's experience in _Special_ is all _too_ likely.

_Special_ was begun in April of 2001, when "Just About Sex" appeared as a one-off. It was completed in January of 2005. It went on to win several awards and be (positively) reviewed on non-fanfic, non-X-Men sites (including, most notably, by Eric Burns of _Websnark_).

It is - hands down - the hardest novel I have ever written (emotionally). It's also the one of which I'm most proud (fanfic or not). I've had letters from abuse survivors, foster kids, and once, from an ex-prostitute who wanted to know if I'd been "in the life" (the answer is 'no'). Nice reviews are nice. But when someone writes to thank you because something you wrote touched them deeply ... well, that goes beyond "nice." It's damn _humbling_. That's why I'm most proud of this story. Stories should touch the capacity of the heart - move us and _heal_ us (if we're lucky). _Climb the Wind_ may have got a lot of attention and praise in X-Men. _Finding Himself_ did similar in Harry Potter. But _Special_ is in a category all its own because it MATTERED to people, including people who'd survived a living hell. I salute them. They are far, far stronger than I.

While I've made every attempt to portray Scott's healing process as accurately as I could, be aware that the _time frame_ is accelerated for narrative pacing. The healing process varies from person to person, and no one in recovery should measure her or his recovery time by that of another (especially not of a fictional character).

This novel could NOT have been written without the generous assistance of several people, most notably Lesani, who works with foster kids and sex abuse survivors. Yes, I was a therapist in "real life" for a while, but I did bereavement. We all specialize. Accuracy of specific foster system and therapy details owe to her help and advice.

It's a novel of 148K words, but it's really a series of braided short stories, each of which has a clear beginning and end (a little more clear than usual book chapters).

Because it assumes the history in the comics, _Special_ includes two comics characters who do not appear until X3 (and then in different ways): Hank McCoy (Beast) and Warren Worthington (Angel) - as well as Scott (Cyclops) and Jean Grey (Phoenix). Although Bobby Drake (Iceman) WAS part of the original 5, here, he's "replaced" by Ororo Munroe (Storm), as she was part of the "teachers" in the X-Men movie, so I made an adjustment. Her history here is, also, based on the comics.

(For anyone who likes visual images ... Aside from the actors cast in the parts for the film, I used a [young] Jude Law for Warren Worthington, Jon Favreau for Hank McCoy, as well as the extraordinary Andre Braugher for the original character, Dr. Jonathan Bennett, Scott's therapist.)

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><p><strong>A FEW BASICS (posted withbefore all X-Men novels):**

In my X-Men fiction, I created TWO basic "worlds," each of which shares a common continuity. I re-use these because it's convenient, but that means things can get a bit confusing if one launches into the novels indiscriminately.

The **_chief difference_** between my two worlds involve radically different origins for Cyclops (Scott Summers). Essentially, these two worlds are "movie world" and "comic-based movie world." Or, **_Scott is not an orphan_** vs. **_Scott is an orphan_**. Each does have a "preliminary" or "prequel" novel that explains how the X-Men came to be in that particular "world."

In the first category (non-orphan), the history of Scott is based (loosely) on the history given in the novelization of the FIRST X-Men movie, or _X-Men I_ (dir. Bryan Singer, please don't confuse it with the recent _X-Men: First Class_). _X-Men I_ came out in 2000. The second category is much more heavily based on the comics themselves, and utilizes his official comics history as an orphan.

**_Novels/short stories that utilize the NON-ORPHAN background:_**  
><em>An Accidental Interception of Fate<em> (prequel)  
><em>Climb the Wind<em> (set after X1)  
>[<em>Heyoka<em> & _Children of the Middle Waters_ (not available on FF-net)]  
>(story series) "Man Behind Red Shades" &amp; "Micky Blue Eyes"<br>(short stories) "Letters and Papers from Prison," "Mutant Darwin Awards," "Sleepy Dragon," "101(and not Dalmatians)," "Bitch," "Idle Musings of a Woman at Eighty," "Broken," & "Agonia."

**_Novels/short stories that utilize the comics-based ORPHAN background:_**  
><em>Special: the genesis of Cyclops<em> (prequel)  
><em>Grail: a novel of resurrection<em> (set after X2)  
>(Short stories) "Five Pounds," &amp; "Anahinga,"<br>(Crossovers) "Case X-1743: Unresolved" (X-Files) & "The Room With a Computer" (Harry Potter)

In terms of sheer wordcount, I probably produced more work for X-Men than any other fandom, especially if one also counts the purely comics-based stories (or "comicverse" vs. "movieverse").


	2. Just About Sex

**Warning:** **ADULT**. I'm _not_ kidding. This story begins with one of the more graphic chapters in the novel; most are not like this.

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><p>I didn't eat today because I knew I'd eat tonight. So I saved my boxes of macaroni and cheese, Ramen noodles, and instant rice. It's the night for my best regular john, and I dress carefully. I don't want to piss him off. He's particular. I wash my hair and do minimal makeup; unlike a lot of my usual trade, he doesn't want me looking too girly. Nothing on under black leather pants, my cigarettes tucked in the waistband at the base of my spine, tight shirt that bares my midrift and the silver navel ring, heeled boots and short leather gloves. This is his outfit. Once every two weeks.<p>

The guy in the silver jaguar. He's never told me his name. I asked him for it once, when he asked me for mine. I figured he'd give me something fake but I'd prefer to call him by a fake name than just 'Hey, mister.' He'd shaken his head. "Call me John." I'd laughed at that. But I don't call him John. He's the guy in the silver jaguar.

Tonight, we meet as we always do, outside Jimmy's Diner. It's drizzling a little, fuzzing streetlights and slicking the streets of Alphabet City like summer sweat. I'm glad I don't have to be out in this shit. Meeting here is part of the deal. He feeds me as a prelude. He started it, not me. "Your pimp may take most of what I pay you, but he can't take the food out of your belly," he'd said.

He's a little early tonight, leaning up against his shiny silver car despite the rain, waiting on me. He gives me a kiss and tells me I'm pretty. He smells of wet man and metal. Then he takes me in and feeds me, lets me eat as much as I want while he watches and drinks German beer. Sometimes he smokes, sometimes he doesn't, but he always glares at me when I do - which seems hypocritical. He's committing statutory rape and soliciting sex, yet he worries about who sells me cigarettes? But he's an old guy so I cut him some slack for out-dated values. We sit at a booth that isn't entirely clean and listen to Vince Gill on the juke box. The waitress' hair has been bleached until it's frizzy and her voice is hoarse from a spring cold. When I'm done shoveling in food, he asks the question he always asks, "Did you get enough to eat?" His voice has a faint accent that I've never placed. I nod, he pays, and we go out.

I get in his fancy car with its leather interior and he takes me somewhere nice. That's another part of the deal. No motels that charge by the hour and leave the sheets unwashed and stiff. This is part of why I dress carefully. The desk staff have no illusions about what I am and why we want a room. But for one night every two weeks, I pretend to be what I'm not**: ** high class call. We rotate between three places. They're used to us by now, and all I have to do is keep my mouth shut and let my fine features and ivory skin do the talking. Pretty, pretty, like porcelain. When I'm out with him, I'm good for the night. A real dinner and a clean bed that I get to sleep in, not just lay on belly down with my legs spread.

We go up to the room. This is the kind of place that gives out key cards. Inside, I retreat to the bathroom to freshen up. I sweep all the sample-sizes into my pockets**: ** shampoo, soap, hand lotion. Then I brush out the tangle damage from windy rain; my hair and my eyes are my best features. This is the hotel with the little round bulbs above the mirror instead of the big ones, and a shower instead of a bath. I suppose I could remember hotels by their names but it's not the name I see the most of. I think I like this one best of the three. I check my face. Just a little mascara and black eye-liner to frame the clear blue of the irises. But I look good. I don't really need anything else. I go out.

He's waiting for me, lazing on the bed. His shirt is off. He's not built badly for a guy his age. He watches me.

Now is my time to pay up for the grace of these evenings. Of course he gives me cash just like any other john, but I won't see most of it. My real compensation comes in intangibles. Food, a nice room and clean bed, a ride in a fancy car. The fact that he's gentle. The others in my stable are jealous of what I've got, so I minimize it. Sometimes, I feel like I'm the one who should pay - which is perverse. But given my usual johns, he's a privilege of which I'm very mindful. "What do you want tonight?" I ask.

He appears to think about it, though I'm sure he already had his mind made up. "Start with your mouth. We'll go from there." It's blunt, but we don't play games. That's the third part of the deal. The first time he picked me up, he told me, 'Don't fake liking it and don't fake coming; I don't need the ego-boost. This is an exchange of goods. I feed you and give you a clean place to sleep, and cash. You give me sex. Clear?"

Oddly, I respect him for that. It puts everything up on the table. He's never gypped me. I don't gyp him. He gets good head, or a good fuck - whatever he wants.

Tonight, it's a blow-job. I unbutton his jeans and pull them down, lick the skin of his thighs to prepare him, listen to him groan. He has hairy legs, and coarse, kinky fuzz around his cock. It's grey and dark brown; I guess his hair was dark once. I run my gloved hands up and down his thighs while I suck at the soft skin over his balls. Before I move to his cock, I roll a condom on him for my own reassurance, though he's told me he's clean (and I believe him - but that doesn't mean I throw out good sense). Then I get to work. This is my best client, so I give out accordingly and don't even need to smoke up to face working him. I want to please. Not from love. Plain obligation. He feeds me, he doesn't beat me, and he's never asked me for anything really kinky. I wonder if his woman does this for him, or if that's why he seeks me out. I wonder if he even has a woman. He's a mutant. He told me that, the first time he hired me. "Do you have a problem with mutants?" he'd asked.

"Do you have a problem with cash?" I'd replied.

"I have no problem with cash."

"Then I have no problem with mutants." It's not like he looks different.

It never takes him long when I use my mouth. He likes being sucked off, comes fast and hard, makes a lot of noise but tries not to buck too much and choke me. The condom saves me from the taste.

After, I peel off rubber and toss it in the trash while he pants down from the sex-high. We rest a while, say nothing. He doesn't even take off my clothes this time, though he did let me ditch the heeled boots. Not the gloves, though. He plays with the ring in my navel and threads fingers through my hair. He likes long hair. Most men do; that's why I keep it down to my chin although it's a pain in the ass to wash out, given the lack of water pressure in my dive of a room. He never talks much in the after time. Smalltalk isn't his thing. I asked him once if he liked sports. He said no. That was the end of that conversation. Another time, I dared to ask what he did for a living. He gave a lopsided smile and said, "Save people like you." And what the hell did that mean? Was he a social worker or something? Not knowing how to reply, I hadn't. His words had made me angry but I didn't dare show it. I'm practical - do nothing to jeopardize the meal ticket. But how was fucking me saving me? So what if he fed me first and took me to a fancy room to suck him off? It made him a nice john. He was still a john.

Tonight, though, we don't speak for a long while. He continues to play with my hair. His hands are calloused and gentle. Finally, I ask, "Why me?" This is the question I've been working myself up to for months. "Why do you always want me?"

Even more time goes by before I get an answer. Finally, he says only, "Because you remind me of someone. And you're special. More special than you know."

He sits up abruptly and starts pulling on his clothes. "That's it?" I ask, sitting up, too. "You don't want to go again?" Despite his age, he usually wants to go twice. A blow job then a fuck, or a blow job and a hand job with the leather gloves. He's got this weird thing for leather and metal, but that's as kinky as he gets.

"Not this time," he says. "I must get back."

"Your woman?" I ask, greatly daring.

His glare tells me that I pushed too far. "None of your business. This is just about sex. Don't ask questions I can't answer." Then his face softens and he sighs. "Oh, never mind. You may as well know. This was the last time, child. I'm leaving New York tomorrow. I'm sorry."

My stomach plummets but I keep it off my face. I'd known it couldn't last forever. Life's a bitch. I take the highs I can get. But something in me makes me ask, "If I'm so special, will you take me with you?"

He shakes his head. "I can't do that."

Pride keeps me from begging. I do still have some pride left.

When he's finished dressing, he goes to the door and I follow. He has the keycard. "Be sure you get everything before you leave in the morning." He always turns in the card before he leaves, but I get to sleep in the room all night. Maybe I should resent him for not trusting me with the card, but the fact is, if he'd left it for me, I'd have taken advantage of it. In this, as in so much else, he knows which end is up.

Now, he presses money into my hand, my pay for the whole night even though he takes only a few hours of it. His usual tip is rolled up separately in an envelope. "_Food,_" he tells me. "Not crack or pot or cigarettes or beer."

"Food," I echo, as I always do. And usually, that's what I use it for, especially this time when it's the last extra I may see for a while.

He studies me a long moment then, says, "I can't take you with me. I wish I could. Maybe we'll see each other again one day. But I can send you to someone else. Look in the envelope. Good night" - he kisses me again, but on the forehead, like a benediction - "and farewell, my beautiful boy."

Then he leaves me. The hall light catches on his blinding white hair and with a casual lift of his hand, he shuts the door in my face. Mutant power. The metal lock clicks over.

I open the envelope. Five hundred dollars and an address scribbled on a match cover. Some place in Westchester. Greymalkin Lane. Beneath that are the words, "He'll take care of you, Scott."

So, I guess I have a new john. I hope he's as nice as the guy in the silver jaguar.


	3. Between Scylla & Charybdis

I sat on a strange bed in an unfamiliar room at a rich mansion in the Westchester countryside, and thought about the art of second-guessing. It's a necessary talent, for a hustler.

I've had to second-guess the desires of johns more times than I care to count - men too shy, or with too little knowledge of the possibilities. They'd relied on me to tell them what to do. Then there were the dangerous ones, the johns who got a kick out of power games. They'd keep me in the dark about what they expected, but punish me if I got it wrong. And last, there were the tricks you just didn't take, based on a hunch or a bad gut feeling. Life might be nasty and brutish sometimes, but I was in no hurry to make it short, too. Second-guessing was a survival skill, and I seemed to have an instinct for it.

This time though, I had no idea what to expect. The guy was in a _wheelchair_, for crying out loud. A paraplegic. I'd never done a paraplegic before, didn't even know what he _could_ do. Maybe he just wanted to watch me perform, but that wasn't my specialty. Still, if it got me out of doing anything else, I'd work on it. It wasn't like I hustled because I enjoyed dick. After running from Boys' Town not quite two years ago, I'd discovered that I had exactly one useful skill and one saving grace. I could play pool, and my face was as pretty as a girl's. But when I'd hustled at pool, as often as not, I'd gotten my pretty face messed up later. When I'd hustled my ass, being kicked around had come less often, so I'd picked the path of least resistance and tried not to think about the fact that I was probably HIV positive. I'd had gonorrhea twice and syphilis once, and the crab too many times to count. That was life.

Now, my life was about to change.

After the guy in the silver jaguar had left New York, I hadn't immediately followed the address that he'd given me. I'd been too angry, and too cautious, and too damn stubborn. But when cash had gotten tight, leaving me caught between Scylla and Charybdis, my pride had faded. I hadn't known what to expect, but I'd trusted that whoever was on the other end of the address wasn't dangerous. Still, I'd put a switchblade in my pocket, just in case. You don't live long on assumptions. Even if Westchester County lay just north of the city, it was a land of milk-and-privilege that had felt as far away for me as the moon, so I'd packed as if I were leaving for a few days not a few hours and dressed in street clothes for the trip - old, ripped jeans and a red hooded sweatshirt - then told Mariana I was going to the library. She'd stared pointedly at my backpack but had asked no questions. That's why I love her. She doesn't play my mother even if she is ten years older than me. And she loves me because I don't try to get into bed with her. Or rather, when I do, it isn't for sex. She lets me sleep with her when I have nightmares, and sometimes she comes to my bed seeking sanctuary from her own.

I'd left Greenwich Village in the early afternoon because I didn't want to look for the address on the matchbook after dark, and this trip was mainly to scope out my options in any case. The man hadn't summoned me and I wasn't sure if the guy in the silver jag had even told him about me. Taking the Number Six out of the Village to Grand Central, I'd had to wait for the MTA Metro-North leaving at 2:20. Eeling into a seat that opened improbably near a window, I'd put on my headphones and stared at my faint reflection painted unchanging over the whiz of scenery outside**:** cold city concrete transmuting into autumn gold countryside, out past Tarrytown to arrive an hour after departing at a speck on the map called New Salem. There, I'd changed into work clothes in the station bathroom, then hired a taxi to drive me to the address I'd been given. The driver had awarded me an odd look, but shrugged and let me in. Turned out, the address wasn't in town at all but at a big estate in the country. I'd expected an anonymous flat reserved for some rich guy's cheap fucks, though how I'd been supposed to contact him, I hadn't been sure. I think I was more surprised than the driver when he let me out at the gate to a private mansion.

_Shit_, I'd thought as I'd walked up the lane. I'd learned fast in this business to locate the exits even before entering, but the mansion was a hell of a long way from any neighbors. Bodies could disappear out here.

The house itself overwhelmed - had great glass windows opening above a circular drive and a manicured lawn, private gardens, apple orchard . . . I'd wondered how many acres it covered. I didn't belong here; I belonged at the curb with the rest of the trash. But I'd taken the earphones off my head and mounted the steps to the front door anyway, rang the bell.

_Good afternoon, Scott, please come in. The door is open; I've been waiting for you. _

At first I'd thought it was a loudspeaker. Then I'd realized: the voice was coming from inside my fucking _head_.

I'd almost turned around right then and fled. That I hadn't, had owed to hunger. Pushing the door open, I'd entered to find an old, bald guy in a wheelchair sitting there in the foyer. He had an eagle nose and sharp, small eyes of indeterminate color. His age was about the same as that of the man who'd sent me to him, and he'd looked me up and down thoughtfully. In the train station, I'd put on for him the same outfit that I'd kept for his friend in the silver jag. I'd figured it was as safe a bet as anything. "Aren't you cold?" he'd asked. No judgement, just the question.

I'd glanced down at the short-sleeve, middrift muscle-shirt I wore in late September. In fact, I was cold, but said only, "It's okay if you like it."

"It is not 'okay.' Please come with me." And he'd motored off, calling over his shoulder, "My name, by the way, is Charles Xavier, a former professor of psychology at Queen's College, Oxford, though I've also taught at Columbia." He had the British accent to go with the former. "My students used to call me 'Professor X.'"

Baffled, I'd trailed him. He was giving me his name and occupation? But I'd supposed that I shouldn't have been surprised. After all, the address had led to his own house, and I'd learned already that the rich could do whatever the hell they wanted, and damn appearances. "How'd you do that . . . thing . . . inside my head? You a mutie, too, like the guy in the silver jag?"

_Yes. Erik Lehnsherr - the 'guy in the silver jag' - and I are both mutants. We met when I was seventeen, and were friends for many years in a world hostile to us. As you no doubt were shown - Eric was never shy - his gifts are related to magnetism. My own are telepathic. _

Holy fucking shit. "You can read _minds_?" I'd squeaked, stopping dead in my tracks. Hungry or not, I'd been ready to flee right then, do not pass 'Go,' do not collect two-hundred dollars.

He'd halted his chair, turning it to face me. "Erik and I do not share the same methodology, Scott. I will not read your mind without your permission unless you are unintentionally projecting - as you are right now about your empty stomach. Otherwise, I shall respect your mental privacy in the same way I would your physical privacy. You are not here for the reason you believe, child."

Then he'd turned again and motored away. Blinking and unsure what to think, I'd followed.

First, he'd fed me, then he'd given me clothes, towels, a razor, a toothbrush, and a room to put them all in. "This is where you'll sleep, Scott. Your room. You may decorate it however you like." And that was how I'd discovered that my status had changed from two-bit hustler to rent boy at a fancy mansion in Westchester county. Looking out the room's french doors past the balcony, I could see the Hudson River in the distance, a dull ribbon of grey. "Is there anything at your apartment that you need to retrieve?" he'd asked.

"No." My former life held absolutely nothing that I wanted, except, "Uh - there is one thing, though. I've, um, got a friend. Not a girlfriend," I'd hastened to explain so he wouldn't get jealous and throw me out. "Just a friend. I need to call her or she'll worry about me."

"If you'll give me a number where she can be reached, I shall have her notified that you are alive and quite well."

It wasn't what I'd had in mind, and it had made me nervous that he wouldn't let me call Mariana myself.

He'd leaned forward in the chair to catch my eyes. "You are in absolutely no danger here, Scott. I promise you. These precautions are for your own protection. Unless I am much mistaken, you have a pimp, and he might be disinclined to release your services?"

True. But, "I'd thought you said you wouldn't read my mind?"

The professor had smiled. "I didn't have to. I read your face. You are free to walk out the front door right now if you wish." He'd gestured back down the hall. "I can call you a cab."

But it hadn't been said as a threat, just an offer. I felt like the feral cat being shown the open door. "That's okay," I'd said.

"I shall leave you now," the professor had said, "and let you settle in. You may shower if you wish, but please, do change into something warmer, and into some shoes you can walk in." He'd smiled when I'd glanced down at my high-heeled fuck-me boots. "Meet me downstairs at five, and we shall take a little tour before dinner at seven."

So I'd followed his suggestion to shower and now sat on the bed staring into the closet like Alice through the fucking looking glass. When he'd asked if there was anything I needed from my room, I'd gathered that he meant me to stay. But this - The closet was full of clothes. New clothes. Expensive clothes. Most had the tags still on them. And they were all bought for me - my size. I'd never had new clothes at Boys' Town. Later, on the street, most of my new stuff had been for work. The last new shirt I'd had that wasn't skin tight had been a pretty woven pullover the same color as my eyes. Mariana had given it to me for my birthday, and Christ, maybe I'd spoken too soon. I'd miss that shirt.

In any case, I got up off the bed to flip through the clothes: jeans and khakis and even a couple pairs of wool dress pants; polos and button-downs and long-sleeved t-shirts. Still in shock, I started yanking open drawers. Socks, underwear, turtlenecks, even belts. And on the closet floor, real leather loafers, tennis shoes, a pair of nice hiking boots, all lined up in a neat row.

How the hell had he known my sizes? Maybe his friend, that guy Erik, had told him. There had been plenty of opportunities for Erik to have looked if he'd wanted.

But it was a prep boy's wardrobe, not the clothes of a hustler. Well, people did have strange fetishes. If he wanted me to dress like an ivy league drop out, who was I to argue? It must be some weird professorial fantasy. Was I to play subsie for all those hot college guys who'd sucked him off so they could get As on the next test, then dropped him cold when the semester was over? I was a little young and a little thin for a college boy, but what the hell. Picking out something that didn't look too dorky, I put it on, then tied my hair back in a ponytail. Long hair did spoil the effect. Maybe he'd want me to get that cut, too.

But I really do hate trying to second-guess johns. That much I'd give Erik. He hadn't played these stupid fuck-games.

Looking at the clock, I had half an hour still to wait. I was too strung out to rest, and my head had started to ache like it did sometimes when I was tense, the pain radiating out from a point in the center of my brow just above my eyes, as if someone had taken an icepick to that spot. I must be light sensitive, because I'd discovered by accident that wearing certain sunglasses helped. Anything with red-tinted lenses. Purple wasn't too bad, either, but red was better.

Pacing was just making me more nervous so I put on my shades and went out onto the balcony to glare off into the westering sun and smoke. I wondered if this guy would be as weird about my cigs as his friend had been, and what would I do if I couldn't get more? I had a couple packs of Camels with me, but that would last only a few days. I'd do just about anything to get off the street and know where my next meal was coming from, but I had limits. If I played the cue ball's fantasy games for sex, outside that, I was myself and he could learn to live with it.

I was almost done with my cigarette when movement to my left caught my attention.

There was a guy walking up the wall. Not with ropes. He was just . . . scaling it freehand, like a rock climber without the chalk. He had the goddamn biggest feet and hands I'd ever seen on a person in my life. I felt my jaw drop at the same time his nose lifted, sniffing the air. Then he turned his head to look directly at me, blinking. His eyes were blue, like mine.

Quicker than I could quite register, he'd grabbed a window ledge and swung himself smoothly over onto my balcony. Like some overgrown ape. Instinctively, I backed against the door, ready to flee inside. But I confess, I was also as curious as hell. Erik had been a mutant, the professor was a mutant, and this guy _had_ to be a mutant or I was James Dean. What was this place?

Aside from his crouching posture and the enormous extremities, he looked fairly normal with wire-rimmed glasses and curly dark hair. He wasn't what I'd call good-looking, but he wasn't ugly. Seeing my alarm, he grinned and straightened up, offering a hand for me to shake. "You must be the new boy. Allow me to introduce myself. I'm Henry McCoy, better known as Hank. Welcome to Westchester, Mr. Summers."

I didn't take the hand. "How the hell do you know my last name?" I'd certainly never given it to the guy in the jaguar.

Shrugging and withdrawing his hand, McCoy perched himself on the balcony rail. I might have worried that he was going to fall off, but after the little display he'd given getting here, I doubted it. "The professor has been waiting for you for some time. I'm sure he'll explain it all, during your tour. How do you like the mansion? And those things will kill you." He pointed to my cigarette. "Have you ever seen a picture of the lungs of a smoker?"

"Black is my favorite color," I said and took a last drag before flicking the butt over the rail.

I could tell he was no more sure what to make of me than I was of him. I decided that maybe I should be friendly, at least until I'd figured out the score in this place.

"What do you do here," I asked, "besides climb the walls and scare the bejeesus out of people?"

He grinned. "I am a medical doctor."

A fucking _doctor_? "Aren't you a little young?" I'd have laid money that he was no more than five or six years older than me - barely out of college.

He sighed, a strangely exaggerated sound. "I fear I was born with more than one gift" - and he raised one of those improbable feet - "or curse, depending on your definitions. My IQ is rather . . . excessive. My high school career ended in ignomity on a football field and the professor brought me here, became my private tutor. After that, there seemed little point in hiding what I could do intellectually in order to preserve my secret, so I finished the equivalent of an undergraduate degree at nineteen and medical school just last year. I am currently working on my internship. The rigors of actual clinical experience do not lend themselves to academic acceleration."

I found myself grinning at this, and not just for his dictionary-who-ate-the-thesaurus language. It was the whole idea**:** ape-man the Einstein. "Where're you doing your internship?"

"Columbia Presbyterian. Well, that's what it _was_ called. The name now is rather a mouthful: New York-Presbyterian, the University Hospitals of Columbia and Cornell." He made it sound suitably dramatic, then shrugged. "No one calls it that except on official stationary."

Still smiling, I made a gesture to take in the whole of him. "Do they know about the wall-walking thing?"

"Most certainly not. People like us must be very careful."

"'People like us'? Sorry, dude, I don't think so. This may be mutie heaven, but I'm just visiting."

He seemed baffled, then shook his head slightly and shrugged. "I believe it is nearly time for your appointment with the good professor. And I must return to my room."

Then he flipped - literally - backwards off my balcony to grab the same window ledge he'd used to arrive, and scampered up the wall. "Hey!" I called after. "Can't you, like, use the friggin' _stairs_?"

"What fun would that be?" he called back before disappearing over the edge of another balcony. "See you at supper, Scott!"

* * *

><p>Despite what McCoy had intimated, the professor said nothing to me about why I was there during my tour of the mansion. Instead, he gave me an abbreviated history of the place, which had been in his family for generations - though how his British accent and the Oxford professorship fit into that, I wasn't clear. The house had all kinds of rooms<strong>:<strong> solar, library, sitting room, commercial kitchen, formal dining room and a dining hall both, chapel, ballroom, stable, indoor pool, workout room, game room, atrium, bedrooms, lots of closets and other undefined storage space. The tour extended outside, as well. Much of the property had been adapted for wheelchair access. There were external gardens and an English-style hedge maze with a gazebo at its heart. "You may like this place," he told me with a twinkle in his eye. "You can hear anyone coming long before they reach you. And the heart of the maze cannot be seen from the mansion."

Why he was telling me how to hide from him, I had no idea. But at least I knew where I could go, to get some peace.

He took me as far as the boathouse, pointing out the jogging path through the pines, then we headed back to the mansion. But he stopped in the garden again and gestured for me to sit down on a stone bench, then he spoke to me about my place here for the first time. "You are not beholden to me, Scott. After you hear what I have to say, you are free to leave, if you wish. If you do choose to stay, then I shall expect you to observe a few common-sense rules. For instance, please be on time for the main meals; it's rude to my cook to expect her to prepare more than one dinner. If you wish to eat at non-meal hours - and I do recall the eating habits of adolescent boys - " he smiled - "You will have to fetch your own meal from the kitchen. If you take a trip into town, please notify someone first. Keys to the mansion vehicles are in the garage, on a board near the door, labeled. Be sure the key is returned to its proper place. Do you have a valid driver's license?"

I just blinked at him. "Sir, I don't have a valid _birth certificate_. How could I get a valid license? I don't know how to drive a car." I didn't mention that I wasn't even sixteen yet, much less eighteen.

This seemed to take him aback. Then he shook his head. "How foolish of me. Of course. We'll have to take care of that. Do you know your social security number?"

"Yeah."

"Good. We can start there. In any case, if you wish to go into town, you may summon a taxi, or perhaps Hank, Jean, or my driver can take you. But if you do go, please don't simply disappear. Otherwise, we may worry. Last, please do not litter the lawn below your balcony with cigarette butts."

Christ. Had he seen me on the balcony earlier?

"As I am all too aware" - he tapped the pipe in his breast pocket - "nicotine can be an insidiously addictive substance, one to which you are apparently already subject. So I shan't ask you to surrender your cigarettes. But I think we can find you an ashtray."

The dry humor made me smile. It was also a surprising concession and, like his confidence to me regarding the gazebo at the heart of the maze, showed unexpected kindness. "I didn't know what you'd think," I said now. "So I didn't ask for one."

He smiled at me and took out his pipe, filling it. "I'll be honest with you, Scott: I hope you'll quit eventually, for the sake of your health. But you'll find that I am not in the habit of criticizing. Not that way. You've been forced to live as an adult for a while now and I'll endeavor to treat you as one, as long as you behave as one. You can make your own decisions. I'll simply be frank regarding my opinions - and from the high ground of personal experience, in this case." He raised the pipe bowl in his hand, and then paused a moment to light it. "It's an unhealthy habit," he continued. "You must decide if your reasons for maintaining it are worth the risk, and that isn't a decision I can make for you. If I did, I'd be your parent, not your teacher."

"My _teacher_?" That made me laugh out loud. "What the hell do you plan to teach me? The kama sutra?"

He sighed. "No, my young friend. Simple math, history and literature. I told you before, you are not here for the reasons you think, and my methods are very different from Erik's." For just a moment, I saw anger in the line of his jaw. "Erik was supposed to have brought you to me months ago. Instead, he played a game of cat and mouse, let you walk the streets because it suited some fancy of his, and waited to tell you about me until he and I were past any point of reconciliation." Abruptly and sharply he shook his head. "No matter. You're here now."

"To go to _school_?" It seemed absurd.

"To go to school," he reiterated. "I'm offering you an education, the chance to recover what you missed while you were struggling to survive. No one will expect anything of you here beyond your attention during study sessions, diligence in your homework, and common courtesy to others. I think you'll like it, Scott." He smiled at me, a wholly genuine expression with no assumptions, no expectations behind it. Kind. It knocked the breath out of me. When was the last time anyone had been kind to me for no reason? Even Mariana was kind because she was my friend. This man was kind without knowing me at all. I didn't trust it, even while I was desperate to accept it.

"What's in it for you?" I asked, because I just couldn't believe there was no reason. "You really don't want me to sleep with you?"

A wash of emotions on his face - anger, pain, disappointment, resignation - ending with abstract sadness "No, Scott. As long as you live here, you will never have to submit to unwanted sexual advances. If anyone should ever suggest such a thing to you, or pressure you into it, you must come to me immediately and _I _will deal with it." The tone of his voice promised that he could. Crippled, locked in a wheelchair as he was, I had no doubt that he could. "Here, you will be _safe_, child. No one will hurt you, no one will beat you, and you will never be hungry."

Simple promises, easy to say, but I felt my eyes sting from overwhelmed tears. I believed him. For some reason, maybe just the sheer strangeness of the whole afternoon - the new clothes in my new closet in my new room, his confidence to me about the gazebo, his generous tolerance of my bad habits - I believed him. It wasn't until much later that I realized he'd never answered the first half of my question, about what was in it for him. "But _why_?" I asked now, rubbing at my eyes under my sunglasses, because tears were weak and I'd learned never to be weak.

"Because you're special," he answered. "You're one of a tiny percentage of the population who's fantastically gifted."

It was such a patently absurd statement, my mouth dropped open. "_Me? _Hey, man, you got the wrong guy. I'm not your wall-climbing monkey genius. My IQ's pretty goddamn average."

"That isn't what I meant - nor is it true. I know more about you than you might think. Just how many streetwalkers spend their summer afternoons reading their way through the New York Public Library?"

"What the fuck does that prove? A library's air-conditioned."

"So is a mall."

"A library's _quiet_ - which a mall sure as hell ain't."

"Mmmm. Yes. And just how many books did you read in the meantime?"

"If I didn't read, they kicked me out."

His smile grew. "Fair enough. Nonetheless, a library rat is a rather different animal than a mall rat, don't you agree?"

I felt myself turning red, and wouldn't reply.

"Scott, there is no shame in liking books. You have a tremendous mind and books feed the mind as surely as your ham-on-rye fed your stomach at lunch." The smile again. "In my experience, most mutants _are_ above average in intelligence."

He thought I was a mutant? Was that was this was about? His friend Erik must have led him on a wild goose chase.

I stood up. "Professor Xavier, I think you have some wrong ideas." He'd been kind to me, and he wasn't trying to get me into bed. Something drove me to do the right thing in return. "Maybe your friend didn't level with you or something. Maybe I shouldn't either, but you'll find out eventually, so I'll just tell you. I'm not a mutant. I'm just your average runaway. Hustling is how I make a living. There's nothing special about me, unless you count my eyes." I pulled off my sunglasses to show him my blue eyes. I was vain of them. 'Killer eyes' Mariana had called them as a joke.

But inexplicably, the professor had started chuckling. "Yes, Scott, there is something very special about your eyes. So we think, Hank and I. Just what and how they are special will reveal itself in due course. And I am not mistaken - you _are_ a mutant. I managed to find you before your power manifested catastrophically."

This was just absurd. But he seemed so certain of himself. And what he said about my eyes . . . I thought about my headaches again - headaches like those suffered by people who needed glasses. Except my eyesight was 20/20, better than 20/20, in fact.

I didn't like that train of thought.

"If my power hasn't manifested, how could you possibly know I'm a mutant?"

The smile didn't disappear. "I will show you. But first, I must have your word. Will you stay here to become my student?"

I mulled it over. He didn't rush me. There were times enough that I'd lied through my teeth. But if I gave my word, I kept it. When forced into personal humiliation on the grand scale, maintaining small points of honor mattered.

And the plain fact was, I wanted off the street. This man was offering me a way out. He might be a mutant and the world might hate him for it if they knew, but he'd bought nice clothes for a cheap hustler and now he was promising me an education so I could do something with my life that didn't involve getting on my knees and opening my mouth. He'd said that no one would harass me and I could sleep in my own bed. Alone. And I'd have enough to eat. "Okay," I told him finally. "I'll be your student. I think you're crazy, but I'll stay here."

The smiled turned brilliant. "Then come Scott. I want to introduce you to Cerebro."

* * *

><p><strong>Notes:<strong> Yes, Hank is pre-blue and older than Scott, who is not the first student - quite. Thanks to Mo for subway info, to Leila for the professor's background, what little we know, and to Domenika for information on Columbia.


	4. The Bird Whose Wings Made the Wind

****"What are you reading?"

"Mmm?" I glanced up. Hank had dropped down beside me on the couch. He must have come into the den across the ceiling because my peripheral vision hadn't seen him cross the floor. But I was getting used to his sudden appearances, didn't jump out of my skin any more. Instead, I held up the book so he could see the cover for himself.

"_Islam, Gender, and Social Change_?" he asked, with something like astonishment.

"The professor assigned it to me. After the debate."

The debate of a couple of nights ago, when Hank and I had made the mistake of trying to have a conversation about religion. The only thing we'd been able to agree on was that neither of us believed in it. "And are you learning anything new?" he asked now.

"Don't start on me, Monkey Toes. And I thought you were on-call last night?"

"I was. Got home half an hour ago." Reaching over with one of those impossible feet, he plucked the book from my hands and held my place while he checked the table of contents. "'Islam and Gender: Dilemmas in the Changing Arab World,' 'Gender Issues and Contemporary Quran Interpretation,' 'Islam, Social Change, and the Reality of Arab Women's Lives.' Now that chapter sounds interesting. And it would appear that many of the contributing authors are Arab women."

"They are. And that chapter is interesting. Now give it back."

He did so, then settled down to unfold that morning's _New York Times_. We read in companionable silence. He didn't say anything else about the book, and I didn't admit that it was making me re-think my position from our debate - as the professor had known it would, I'm sure. Maybe Islam wasn't as repressive as I'd thought. A lot depended on interpretations of the _Qur`an_. But wasn't that usually the case? Everything in life is a matter of perspective.

Except math, maybe. That's why I love numbers. Call me crazy, but I do. Numbers are straightforward. You learn the formulae, you plug in the numbers, and if you're careful, the right answer comes out the other end. Nothing gray. No guessing, like in the rest of my life. No emotions to confuse things. You just do it.

The professor had figured out pretty quick that I'd finish all my math and science homework first, then history and humanities, but would tackle literature only if I couldn't find anything else to distract me. And there's plenty around the mansion to distract. Swimming, riding, watching TV, playing pool, even teasing the squirrels in the garden. It's not that I don't like to read. I'll read anything - fiction, non-fiction, doesn't matter - but if it's a story, I want to feel it, lose myself in that world. I don't want to pick it apart after. Maybe that's why Xavier had sicced Monkey Toes on me.

Hank McCoy is seriously weird. He hangs from the fucking _ceiling_ to read his mail, for Christ's sake. And he talks like somebody crammed a dictionary down his throat. But I like him. He's never in a pissy mood, he doesn't judge me, and he always seems glad to see me when I show up in his downstairs lab. 'Frankenstein's Retreat,' he calls it. He knows more about opera than anybody ought to, and can read a four-hundred page book in a single afternoon, but he still likes Twinkies, has the whole _Star Wars_ collection, plays a mean Nintendo, and has a real human skull he named Yorick sitting on one of his filing cabinets. We have water-gun wars with green Kool-Aid instead of water - but not in the mansion . It'd ruin the wood paneling.

He's not my teacher, like Xavier, but he teaches me things. When I hadn't gotten the joke about Yorick, he'd howled over the horrors of modern cultural deprivation in America, then proceeded to quote whole chunks of _Hamlet_ from memory and found a local performance to take me to see. Some high school drama department production, but he didn't care. It had to be _on the stage_. Attending a play had been a new experience for me, and I'd loved the immediacy of it, the connection between the actors and the audience, even the darkened theater that had transported me to another world - but not passively, as in a cinema. This was how story ought to be**:** lived and breathed. Experienced. Not analyzed. So now we go to plays, and Hank knows all the best - old, new and in-between: _A Doll House_ by Henrik Ibsen, which made me want to cheer when Nora slammed the door on Torvald; _The Marriage of Bette and Boo_ by Christopher Durang, which was so blackly ironic I hadn't known whether to laugh or cry; and only the week before, _Angels in America_, by Tony Kushner. That last had sucker-punched me. Hard.

_I want more life. I can't help myself. I do. I've lived through such terrible times, and there are people who live through much much worse, but . . . You see them living anyway. When they're more spirit than body, more sores than skin, when they're burned and in agony, when flies lay eggs in the corners of the eyes of their children, they live. Death usually has to take life away. I don't know if that's just the animal. I don't know if it's not braver to die. But I recognize the habit. The addiction to being alive. We live past hope. If I can find hope anywhere, that's it, that's the best I can do. It's so much not enough, so inadequate but . . . Bless me anyway. I want more life._

Those words _burn_. Life can be shit, but you live anyway. Or at least you exist, and you want to keep existing. I've sat so many times with a razor, or pills - and once with a gun - thinking how simple to just . . . stop. Stop trying, stop hurting, stop _being_. But I hadn't done it. I don't know if that had stemmed from inertia, or cowardice, or foolishness, or plain stubbornness, but dying was the ultimate 8-Ball sink. It's all over and you don't rack them again. And I refuse to lose.

Whatever had stayed my hand, here I am. And for the first time, I really _want_ more life. I look forward to waking up in the morning. Harper said at the end of _Angels in America_, "In this world there is a sort of painful progress. Longing for what we've left behind, and dreaming ahead." I can't say I long for much in my past except the family I can barely remember, and I lost them, I didn't leave them. But I am learning to dream ahead.

I'd been at the mansion for three months, now. I'd had plenty to eat and more to keep me busy. Even school wasn't so bad because the professor was more interested in what I learned than in giving me a grade. In fact, I hadn't gotten a grade on anything yet, wasn't sure he was going to bother. I either understood the material or we went over it again - and that made a hell of a lot more sense to me. I didn't mind taking a test when the point was to find out what I hadn't followed. If school at the group home had been like this, I might have tried. But fun and games came to a screeching halt on a Tuesday morning, three months and four days after I'd arrived.

I'd never been a big person for mornings, and while the professor got up with the sun, he didn't seem to care when I came to class, as long as I came prepared. So we'd fallen into a routine of starting my lessons around ten o'clock over coffee, tea and bagels. And we worked until we were done. I might not be a morning person, but I'm not a slacker, either. I do something well, or I don't do it at all. And I wanted to please him, which might have scared the shit out of me if I'd stopped to think about it. Caring meant eventual disappointment. In life, I'd learned quickly to stay detached. Here, I'd become anything but. Simply put, I _liked_ these people. They treated me as if I were a human being, not a piece of fuck-meat. Neither Hank nor the professor had ever laid a hand on me that extended beyond camaraderie. And believe me, I knew the difference.

But that Tuesday morning, I got blasted out of bed a little after eight-thirty by a mental call from Xavier. _I am sorry to wake you at such an 'ungodly' hour_ - I could almost hear his amusement - _but we have a _situation.

"A what?" I'd said to the air. I knew he could hear me if I just thought it, but it felt weird to me. I preferred speaking aloud.

_A young man at a private prep school in New Hampshire, a young mutant. He's been 'outed' by his classmates, and I fear for his safety. _

"So why wake me? Can't you call the cops?"

A mental sigh_. And just what do you think the police would do?_

Good point. I'd met some decent cops in my time on the street, people who did their job, but I knew first-hand just how much 'help' others could be to anyone whom they thought undeserving. And as I'd come to like these people, I'd also become protective of them. 'Mutant Menace' my ass. I felt safer at Xavier's than I'd ever felt in my life since my parents had died. Nonetheless . . . "So what can _we_ do?"

_Why, go and fetch him, Scott. _

"How? Hop in a handy-dandy private jet?"

_Precisely. _

Some days, it's better to keep your mouth shut.

I showed up in the mansion's underground, still struggling into clothes and trying to comb hair that hadn't been washed yet. I wasn't any too sure about this little adventure. For one thing, I wasn't sure I could get on the damn _plane_. I'd lost my parents in a plane crash, and hadn't been on one since.

Yeah, right. Like I'd had the money to buy a ticket anyway? But that didn't ease my fear as I approached the professor, waiting beside a nondescript door near Hank's lab. I'd never been through that door.

Sometimes, living here, I felt as if I were in a James Bond movie. Imported marble floors, oak wainscoting, and crystal chandeliers upstairs, while down below, we had steel hallways, recessed fluorescent lighting, and pneumatic entryways. I did know my way around a little - enough to get to Hank's lab, the workout room and the computer core. I'd seen Cerebro, but that place gave me the heebie-jeebies so I just stayed the hell away. Now, the professor opened this new door for me . . . onto a hangar bay that housed the jet to which he'd referred.

I'd been expecting a nice, white, private Leer jet like the rich buy. But this . . . It was black and sleek and quite likely capable of breaking the sound barrier.

Jesus H. Christ. My jaw must have hung down four inches. "Where in hell did you get _this_?" I asked, forgetting all about my fears. Lust at first sight.

_I have my connections. Come, Scott. We must hurry. _

The door was already open, and there was a specialized lift to get the professor's chair into the plane. I'd assumed he was going to fly it, but once aboard, I found Hank in the pilot's seat. "I thought you were on-call last night?" I said, coming forward cautiously to sit in the seat behind his as the professor motored up to take the co-pilot's chair, shifting himself easily from the wheelchair to the seat, folding up the chair and storing it behind, then strapping down the harness and putting in a radio earpiece.

Like I said - a James Bond movie.

"I am still on-call," Hank told me now. "A doctor's primary call is the preservation of health - which is what we are going to New Hampshire to do."

I found the harness and strapped myself down even as the jet was lifting off - straight up. "_Shit! _Is this a plane or a goddamn helicopter?"

"Language, Scott," the professor said mildly. "And to answer your question, this craft has been modified for VTOL - vertical take-off and landing - - thanks to Hank."

"Yeah, I know what VTOL is. And man, is there anything you can't do, Monkey Toes? Medicine, jet design, debates on the finer points of Islam?"

"I can't dance."

"_You_ can't dance? Mr. Agility?"

"I look ridiculous, and I refuse to make myself a laughing stock." There was an edge to his reply, so I dropped it and turned my attention to strapping on the knives I'd brought**:** three throwing knives and a switchblade hidden up a compartment of my jacket sleeve.

The professor watched me do it. "I don't think you'll need those, Scott."

"Maybe not. Maybe so."

"We work without bloodshed."

I raised my head to meet his eyes. "Peachy keen. I'm glad for you. As long as no one tries to shed mine, I'll be happy to go along with House Rules."

He shook his head at that, more in disappointment than disapproval - and disappointment works a hell of a lot better on me. He knows it, I'm sure.

"Look," I said after a moment, "you dragged me out of bed to come help. Fine, I'll help. But not unless you let me defend myself. Unlike you two, I don't have any special 'gifts.' I have to make do with my wits and some sharp steel."

"Your wits would worry me more than your knives," Hank said from the pilot seat, even as he was leveling us out at cruising altitude and pushing the throttle. I could feel the pull on my face and skin from the accelerating speed, and all my previous fears suddenly struck back. I was on a freaking plane. Gripping the armrests tightly, I swallowed twice, trying to clear my ears and my memory, but my heart had started to pound in my chest.

"Did you log and clear our flight path?" the professor was asking Hank, oblivious to my distress.

"Already done. I would rather not impact another aircraft at mach two."

Mach two? Fuck. If something went wrong at this speed, I'd be dead before I knew what had hit me.

I squeezed my eyes shut and swallowed again - bile this time. Holy Fuck, I was _not_ going to throw up. I could do this. I'd done worse. This was just a little plane ride. I could handle this. Slow the breathing, Summers. Don't freak out.

"Scott." The professor's voice cut into my private terrors. "You're going to be fine. Nothing will happen to you. You're going to be just fine." The voice was hypnotic, and calmed me - perhaps with a little telepathic help, but just then, I didn't care if it let me unscrew my eyes and get them open. I found the professor half-turned, regarding me. "You're very brave, Scott. And I am very sorry. In my haste, I did not think."

"It's okay," I lied. But I didn't want to talk about it, especially not in front of Hank, who was thankfully playing deaf.

June 22nd, seven and a half years ago - the worst day in a life full of shitty ones. The day I'd been tossed out of an airplane with my brother tied to my chest and one parachute between us. The day I'd lost both my parents. The day my whole fucking life had blown apart like the plane above my head.

Now, Xavier nodded to me once, smiled tentatively, and turned back to face the cockpit window.

It took us less than twenty minutes to reach New Hampshire. We parked the jet in a pasture for the school's horses, empty at the moment, and Hank and I deplaned, leaving the professor to await our return . . . hopefully with a new mutant in tow. He kept the engines primed, in case we had to leave in a hurry - which, as it turned out, we did.

Unsure what we were getting ourselves into, we decided it'd be best to approach the campus obliquely, so we took what was probably a service road around the main building's side. It was a small place, and very exclusive from what Hank told me - essentially a prep school for Harvard, Yale, Columbia and Princeton . . . places like that. The main building was straight out of a British gothic novel**:** old gray stone with lead-glass diamond-pane windows and entryways that soared up to a peaked arch. Creeping ivy covered the walls and arching trees shaded it. The chapel had a bell tower, and a great round stained glass window that looked like a smaller copy of the Rose Window in Notre Dame.

I'm not ignorant, even if I had made a living on my knees with my mouth open. I know what Notre Dame looks like. And gothic architecture interests me - all lights and shadows and soaring lines - but I had no time to admire the building. Nor did we need any help to find where we needed to go. Our quarry was dramatically outlined against a gray New England skyline . . . up on the roof. They had his shirt off, or they'd caught him with his shirt off. From his back sprouted a pair of _wings_. The feathered kind, like an eagle's, but as a white as a dove's, and even at this distance, I could see morning sun strike blond hair.

We were here to rescue goddamn _Gabriel_.

Except that Gabriel wouldn't have been swaying on his feet from a beating, and held immobile by a half-dozen of his 'buddies.' I grabbed Hank to haul him further around the building's side where we could try a door. Locked. "Damn." I kicked it in frustration, then peered through the window. There was no one about that I could see - either inside or on the grounds - which surprised me. It was after nine in the morning. "Where the hell is everyone?" I muttered.

"Probably in class," Hank said as he leapt to grab the top edge of a windowsill. "If the total school population, including instructors and staff, is over 300, I would be very much surprised. Now, as the door is barred against us, we shall have to find an alternative route to the roof. Grab on, Scott." I wasn't too thrilled by that idea, but I did as he said, threw my arms around his shoulders and my legs around his waist. Christ, this must look fucking weird, but we didn't have time to find another tack before the idiots on the roof did something worse to Gabriel than knock him around. They'd looked set to toss him off the edge. Though God knew what they thought they'd accomplish, throwing a guy with _wings_ off a building.

When we did reach the top, Hank skittered low over the roof edge, and I dropped onto flat, hard slate. No cheap gravel on tar commercial roofing, this. We crouched a moment, getting our bearings, and could hear the boys talking in the distance - if not hear all of what they said. Still, "mutie freak" came through clearly enough. It was voiced with all the same vitriol I'd had "faggot whore" flung at me occasionally out of car windows.

My eyes traced out a trail and I pointed, whispering to Hank. "If we sneak around that way, behind the chimneys, we can catch them off guard. I don't think they're posting sentries, y'know?"

"I think you are correct. Lead on."

I did so. Life had taught me how to move quietly and without being noticed, but it never ceased to amaze me how a big guy like Hank could make scarcely a sound. We reached a small building, probably the roof-access stairwell, and crouched behind it. There were five boys dressed in variations on expensive chinos and button downs with monogrammed cardigans and finely styled hair. They'd thrown Gabriel face down on the slate tiles, stretching out his wings to pin him, and were now pulling out hunks of feathers, bloody at the base. "Can't fly without feathers, can you, Worthington?"

"Those _bastards_," Hank muttered beside me.

I shrugged. Gabriel looked to be of much the same ilk as his tormentors and I wondered if he wouldn't be among the ones yanking out feathers had he not been gifted with them. But we were here to do a job for the professor, and I owed him. If he wanted me to haul winged boy's fat ass out of the fire, I'd do my best.

"Hank," I whispered, "if I distract them, can you grab the angel kid and get down the side of the building one-handed without falling?"

"You bet. But what about you?"

"I've been eluding bullies a long time. I'll be fine."

He studied me a minute, but I just stared back until he shrugged. "If you say so." I didn't wait for him to change his mind, but trusted he could figure when to make his move. Scuttling around to the side away from him, I rose up to walk out where they could see me. I'd palmed my switchblade and kept myself between them and the stairwell exit. They might be rich, but I knew better than to assume they weren't dangerous. Daddy's money could buy a lot of things, including fencing, karate, or wrestling lessons. But I'd bet none of them knew down-and-dirty street fighting, where the only rule was to be the one standing at the end.

"Hey!" I shouted at them. "Lay off!"

So it wasn't the most inspired challenge. It still got their attention. All five of them (stupid fools) swung around to look. That was all Hank needed. Exploding out of our hiding spot, he snagged the half-unconscious victim with one hand and a metal support railing with the other, using it to swing around out into space and over the side, and was gone. It took him three seconds. The pack of tormentors barely had time for more than startled gasps and grunts. I used that diversion myself to beat a retreat for the stairs.

It would have been too much to ask that everything go as I'd planned. My foot slipped on a cracked piece of slate and I went skidding to my knees, felt the knife bite into my fingers. That was all the boys needed. They were on me, hissing swear words and curses, but I'd been in tight situations before and knew better than to let them catch me with my back to them. Dropping and rolling, I managed to get my feet up and into the belly of the first attacker, shoving him off. The second got slashed with the switchblade, and a third, too. Both yelped like kicked dogs. But the fourth managed to club me in the head with something hard. Maybe his shoe. "Mutie lover!" he snarled. It made me see stars and my vision tunneled for a moment, long enough for them to grab me. I stabbed one, but they threw me back, pinning my arm to get the knife away. Things were not looking up. "Now it's your turn, you interfering punk."

At that moment, I heard a gleeful howl and two of the guys holding me down went flying. "Avoiding bullies, eh, Scott?" It was Hank's voice. He'd come back for me. "Looks like you might need a little help."

"Yeah, well, I fell!" I snarled, and freed from some of the weight holding me down, got my feet under me. The boys were shouting in surprise. Which one had my switchblade? "Look out, Hank," I said, "One of them has my knife!"

"Oh, joy!" he shouted back, hauling off two more and - quite literally - knocking their heads together . "Now you know why it's not a good idea to fight with one. They're useful only so long as they stay in _your_ hands."

"Gee, why don't you state the damn obvious, Monkey Toes!" I slugged the fifth into next week.

I had to admit, this was kind of fun in a perverse way. I'd always wanted to knock the crap out of a bunch of spoiled rich brats, and now had an excellent excuse. "I think it's time to go!" Hank called, and I broke away, intending to run for the side of the building, so he could grab me and we could make our escape.

Except I never got there. The biggest guy, who was probably the leader of the pack and who had shaken off the effects of Hank's stunning blow, managed to snag me by the arm, swinging me around by using my own momentum against me. But before he could throw me to the roof floor again, there was a gust of wind on both our backs and we glanced up.

Gabriel, looking decidedly grim and bloody but still with feathers enough to fly, had risen above the roof edge. He glared at us all. Surprised, my captor's grip weakened and I twisted free, making for the edge where Hank waited, but before I could reach him, the winged boy swooped down to scoop me up, saying to Hank, "I trust you can get down yourself?" and then we were rising in the air.

I squeezed my eyes shut and muttered, "Oh, shit."

"I won't let you fall," he said. His voice was unexpectedly deep, and his grip strong. "Where did you two come from? And who in hell _are_ you?"

We were no longer climbing higher, but I refused to open my eyes. "My name's Scott," I said. "Hank's the other guy. And we came from the horse pasture."

"The _horse pasture_? How long have you been living in our horse pasture?" He was laughing.

"Well, we didn't come from there originally!" I snapped back, annoyed. "That's where we fucking parked!" I gestured vaguely, though with my eyes still shut, I had no idea if it were in the direction of the pasture. "Just go there. You'll see." I figured that Hank would have had the good sense to head for the plane, too, and the boys on the roof would be too busy milling around to follow very fast. For one thing, they'd have to climb down. And maybe, if we were lucky, some of the teachers might finally have gotten a clue and showed up on the scene.

We flew for a few minutes, and then my transportation said, "My, oh my. Where did you get _that_?" As we were finally descending, I risked cracking an eye. The professor was waiting for us in the hatchway of the sleek black jet.

"Professor Xavier has his connections," I said, echoing what I'd been told earlier.

"Where's Henry?" Xavier asked me as the two of us set down. Gabriel released me and I moved away, uncomfortable with the close physical contact, even for necessity.

"On his way, I hope," I replied. "We kinda had to leave in a hurry."

"He is on his way," the winged boy said. "I saw him." He was eying the professor, who eyed him back. "And you are?" he asked.

"Dr. Charles Xavier, of Westchester. And you," he said with a smile, "are the Avenging Angel, otherwise known as Warren Worthington the Third."

Gabriel - or, rather, Warren - wore an expression of utter shock. "How did you know?"

But before the professor could reply, Hank burst from the trees at the near end of the pasture and leapt the fence, shouting, "I suggest we prepare for immediate lift off! Company is on the way!"

Turning his chair, Xavier disappeared back inside the plane even as Warren and I climbed up the ramp to make our way down the aisle. "Sit there," I said, pointing to the seat behind the professor as I slid into my own and fastened the harness. I could hear Hank hit the bottom of the stairs and then he was up them and into the cabin, slamming the hatch closed. Already strapped in, Xavier had the engines priming and Hank hurried forward to take his pilot's seat as Warren finally figured out how to fasten the harness around his wings. He winced a few times and I was reminded of the pulled feathers. "You going to be okay till we get back?" I asked him.

"I'll live." The reply was short and sharp.

Great. Rich boy manners to go with the fancy name. Maybe we should have left him to his classmates. But then he sighed - "Sorry" - and gave me a tight-lipped smile. "Thanks. I owe you one." His eyes swept the cabin even as Hank was lifting the plane. "Thanks to all of you. They'd have killed me. But" - his eyes were on the back of Xavier's bald head - "I still want to know how you knew. Both that I was in danger, and . . . who I am."

"In good time, Mr. Worthington. I shall be happy to explain it all once we are safely back in Westchester."

The return was short and quiet. Now that the crisis was past, adrenaline quit pumping and both the new guy and I slumped. I was sore and tired, and Warren must have been in pain. He didn't whine though, which made me respect him, but his face was white and he kept his eyes shut.

As soon as we were home, the fancy black jet back in its hangar, Hank took Warren to the infirmary and the professor sent me off to get some rest. I smoked a cigarette on my balcony to calm down, then crashed on my bed - didn't wake again until afternoon. In the shower, what I'd done finally struck me. I could have gotten myself fucking _killed_. But we'd rescued someone. I'd spent most of my life just surviving - no purpose beyond that, no plan for the future, no direction. One of life's tumbleweeds. Now, for the first time, I thought about what I wanted to do with my life. And for the first time, I realized I _could_ do something. I had choices. I could act, not react. I'd helped a guy today, and not to get anything from him in return. I'd helped him because he'd needed it, and because I could, and because someone had helped me . . . and because it was the right thing to do.

That felt good. It felt free. It felt powerful.

_I_ felt powerful.

Turning off the shower, I climbed out to dress, then considered my reflection in the mirror.

It was time to get a hair-cut.

When I got downstairs, there was nobody around. They were probably all still below, and not wanting to interfere, I wrote the professor a note, then took some of the spending money I'd been given and called a taxi. Henry might be teaching me to drive, but I wasn't old enough yet to have a driver's license.

The taxi took me into New Salem. I didn't go to town often - I felt out of place there, and self-conscious. But today was different. I wasn't the same guy I'd been yesterday. I had the taxi stop at a local barber's, paid his fee and asked him to come back for me in an hour. Then I went in. When it was my turn in the chair, I had the barber cut my hair short. Not too short, but like a regular guy's haircut.

From now on, I was nobody's whore.

* * *

><p><strong>Notes:<strong> Regarding the plays, Durang is, I'm convinced, a modern Aristophanes, and the quotes come from "Perestroika," Act V, of Tony Kushner's _Angels in America_.


	5. One Tin Soldier

I like puzzles.

I can remember, as a young child, putting together puzzles with my father. It's one of those oddly clear memories amid a confused jumble of pieces like those from a puzzle box upended. We'd sit on one side of the dining room floor, because it was smooth hardwood, and lay out the pieces, trying to keep them out of the table's shadow. My father only helped me, showed me strategies for assembling them; he didn't do the puzzles for me. "Start with the corners, Scott. Always find your corner pieces, and then the outer edges. Put them together first. You need to know the shape of it. How big it's going to be."

Words to live by.

At first, I took to puzzles in various foster homes like I took to reading, because I could go off for a while and forget what a shithole the rest of my life was. But other kids in the homes would take a vicious joy in wrecking my work, so after the third or fourth time I found 500 pieces scattered across a floor, I quit trying. And I couldn't afford puzzles, living on the street. Once, I'd found one for a dollar in a library bin and bought it. It was a generic woodland scene, but it had boasted 1500 pieces and I'd thought Mariana and I could do it together, like my father and I had used to do. Turned out Mariana hates puzzles because they frustrate her, and the damn thing was spoiled by seven missing pieces. So I trashed it and didn't bother to try my luck again.

It was about three weeks after I'd come to the mansion that I found the "puzzle closet," as I came to think of it. It was full of puzzles of all kinds, and all difficult. Nothing there less than 1000 pieces and most were 3000 to 5000, or mindbenders of some sort, including 3Ds. I was . . . well, I'm not sure I'd go so far as to say I was ecstatic, but I was pretty excited. I'd asked the professor if I could put some of them together, and he'd grinned, saying, "Of course you may," then, "Would you like to see the one on which I'm currently working?"

All those puzzles were his, it turned out. As he explained to me - without obvious bitterness or anger - after he'd lost the use of his legs, he'd turned to puzzles and board games for leisure. I'd asked him if he'd ever tried videogames, too, but he'd just smiled and said, "Sometimes old dogs don't want to learn new tricks."

So now, as often as not when Hank wasn't there, the professor and I would spend the evening in his den at his puzzle table, with tea and biscuits. It's more fun to do it with someone else, even if puzzles don't seem like much of a two-person game. Occasionally we played _Scrabble_, but I'm not as good at that. He taught me how to play _Risk_ instead, and backgammon, and even chess - though I'd turned that down initially as too high-brow. Chess required Bobby Fischer kinds of smarts, and I sure as hell wasn't Bobby Fischer. He let it go at first, but kept coming back to it, and about two weeks before the rescue of Warren Worthington, I caved and let him teach me - found out that chess isn't so hard after all. You just have to think ahead.

But it wasn't until three nights following the rescue of Warren that I found out it all had been an elaborate kind of test. Not of the cruel kind, the toying kind, the kind that judged - the kind he'd never yet given me. But a test, nonetheless, designed to find out what I could do. I think I'd surprised him.

I didn't see Warren but once after the rescue - the next morning at breakfast. Curious, I'd hauled my ass out of bed early for a change, and found he, Hank and the professor down in the kitchen, having crumpets and tea about seven-thirty. Warren had his great wings draped over the back of his chair. They were amazingly white and beautiful, even with bandages on them. And they were huge, too. The professor had said yesterday that he'd been 'outed' as a mutant, but I couldn't figure how the fuck he'd managed to hide anything like that in the first place. "Hi," I said to them all, and they turned as one to face me.

After they got over the shock of seeing me awake at that hour, and of seeing my hair short, Hank pulled out the chair beside his and magnanimously pushed the whole plate of remaining crumpets in front of it. "And now," he said in a nature-show narrator's voice, "may I present the mansion's own Nocturnal Scott! This rare creature usually rises only in late morning or early afternoon, and it's never safe to approach until it's had its regular dose of caffeine - which constitutes at least three cups of coffee."

The professor smiled and Worthington actually laughed. I just rolled my eyes, got my coffee and sat down in front of the tray of four crumpets. "Where's the honey, smart ass?" I asked Hank. He handed it over and I poured it on all the pastries.

Worthington watched me. I couldn't interpret his expression. Amusement - probably at how much honey I used - but also a calculating interest. I don't think he knew what to make of me. I must have looked odd with my newly-shorn hair still sticking up from bed, dressed in plain sweats instead of an elegant bathrobe like his or Hank's, and a spare cigarette stuck behind my ear. But he didn't seem haughty. Then again, he must assume that if I lived here, I came from the same kind of background he did.

And I didn't want to disabuse him of that. Yesterday I'd turned some kind of corner, and I didn't want to go back. The professor knew about my origin because he'd rescued me from it. Hank knew about it because among the first things the professor had asked him to do after I'd decided to stay was to give me a complete physical plus a battery of tests, including certain tell-tale blood tests: all varieties of hepatitis, and HIV. I'd told Hank that I didn't want to know the results of the latter. I was already taking precautions. He'd pondered that for a while, but then agreed. He'd never told me. But once, when I'd managed to cut myself badly while helping the professor re-hang a valance, Hank hadn't touched the wound at all before running down to the infirmary to glove, and then had bagged all the bloodied cloths, latex, and paper towels. I hadn't thought about that until about an hour later, then had known the answer I hadn't wanted to know. But I still didn't know for _sure_. It hadn't been formalized with words, ossified by syllables into the dark inevitable. I could continue to delude myself that he was just careful about routine sanitation, even while I made sure to put my band-aids, dental floss, Kleenex, Q-tips, used toothbrushes, and any other bio-hazard trash, into a Ziploc baggie before throwing it away. Hank was aware of that, too, so we continued with our "Don't ask, don't tell" policy.

In any case, the new guy didn't know anything about my colorful past, and I didn't want him to. "Thank you - again - for rescuing me yesterday," he said, while I inhaled crumpets. The amusement hadn't left his face. His voice was as deep as I'd remembered. It didn't seem to hang right on him, as odd and unexpected as if he'd spoken with a Tennessee twang.

"You're welcome," I replied when I'd swallowed.

"Can you always eat four crumpets in four minutes?"

"No. Sometimes I can eat them in three."

That perfect mouth tipped up into a faint grin, then he turned back to the professor. They discussed the details of how to salvage his public reputation while I finished my coffee. Since I had no reputation to protect, even if I were a mutant, I left after a bit to go feed the mansion cats and tend the horses in the barn. I'd taken over those duties not long after I'd arrived because I liked doing it. I liked animals. They accepted a person - or not - based on the gentleness of hands and the kindness of a voice. They didn't care about the expense of one's clothes or the length of one's hair or how one made a living.

I'd even been given a horse of my own, and the professor was teaching me to ride him - an old black gelding who was placid enough not to jib or buck at my inexperienced seat. I think he liked me because I bribed him with carrots and turnips. In any case, I was a good enough horseman now to tack him and take him out without supervision, which I did that morning after I'd cleaned stalls. Though it was pushing mid-December, there still wasn't any snow on the ground, and I let him run across the pasture and down the trail. I needed to feel again the freedom and power I'd felt the day before. I needed to remind myself that I was a different person here. I had a horse, I had a friend in Hank and a mentor in Xavier, and I had some responsibilities around the mansion. And dammit, yesterday I'd saved a guy's life.

Pulling up on a ridge to the west of the mansion, I looked down at it, squinting in the morning brightness despite the sunglasses I wore more often now. That was my home, improbable as it seemed and charity though it was. I had a home.

And I had classes, too. I sighed; I needed to go back. "Come on, Lardbutt," I told the gelding, and we galloped all the way back to the stable. After grooming him, I went to fetch my books, still smelling of horse.

The professor wasn't in his library. Instead he was in his office, on the phone. He motioned me out and I waited in the hall. Finally, in my head, he told me, _Come in, Scott,_ and when I entered the mahogany wood office, he smiled and said, "Today, unfortunately, I have a good deal of business to see to. You're on your own. I'd like you to finish Mauss' _The Gift_, and be prepared to discuss potlatch behavior. Also, do the second half of the logic problems I gave you. Did you have any trouble with the first?" I shook my head. "Good. We'll also continue with our discussion of Islam, and of chemical kinetics. I shall see you at dinner tonight."

"Where's the new guy?" I asked.

"My driver has already left to return Warren to his family home on Long Island."

"So he's not gonna stay here?" For some reason, I felt a flutter of disappointment at that. Warren had seemed . . . nice. Not an adjective I'd ever have expected to hear myself apply to a member of the pampered jet set.

Xavier was watching me thoughtfully. "At some future point, he might join us here. Or he might not. Would you like to have a fellow student?"

I shrugged, unsure how to answer that. "It'd be okay. You know - to have someone to talk to." Then I realized how that had sounded. "Um, I mean, someone my age. I like talking to you and Hank." In fact, I liked talking to Hank a lot. "But Hank's not around much. And you have your own stuff to do."

Xavier just smiled. "No need to apologize, Scott. It's perfectly normal to want a friend your own age." He tilted his head. "And you're right. Hank _is_ often busy, while Jean hasn't even had time to drop by this fall for you to meet her, and I'm frequently preoccupied. It's no wonder if you're a bit lonely."

I shrugged again. "It's okay. I've been alone a lot; I'm used to it. I'm not complaining, sir."

"Nor did I take it that way." He smiled again. "I know that you are still deciding how honest you can be with me, but trust me - I prefer it when you worry less about offending and more about expressing yourself." The smile turned mischievous. "I find you refreshing, Scott." It was an odd compliment, and made me blush. "Go on, now," he added. "Do your lessons, and I'll see you at supper."

I moved back out the door, but before I could shut it, he called, "Oh, Scott." I glanced back. "Hank tells me that the rescue plan yesterday was mostly your idea."

"Well, sorta." Nervous, I ran a hand through my now-shorn hair, wondering when I'd get use to the lack of weight. "I wasn't trying to be bossy."

"He didn't say you were 'bossy,' merely that you took the bull by the horns."

I hadn't thought about that, but I guess I had taken the bull bythe horns. And even though Hank was older than me and a lot smarter, he'd done what I'd suggested. "I just . . . had an idea," I said now. "If he'd had a better one, I would've gone with that."

"Of course," Xavier said. "And Scott - I'm proud of you. You can go now."

I left oddly warmed by the professor's words. In fact, I wasn't sure which made me feel better: that I'd helped Warren because I could, or that I'd made Xavier proud.

As it turned out, I didn't see the professor at supper after all. He had to go into the city to take care of some of his vague business. I was pretty sure it had to do with Warren. Hank was around but was studying, so I didn't bother him. The next day, Hank went in to the hospital and, for the first time since I'd come there, I found myself left to my own devices for an entire day. Their trust felt good, though I didn't spend much time thinking about that before I took advantage of it. Calling a taxi to drive me to the local metro station, I took a train south into the Village. I'd never asked for permission to go back there after that first day, when Xavier had told me it was too dangerous. Now, I just went, deciding to bank on forgiveness being easier to get.

I wasn't sure why I had to do this, but I did. A closing of doors, I guess.

I still had my keys to the apartment, and was moderately surprised to find that they still worked, too. I let myself in, not sure what I'd find.

The place was a mess. Mariana and neatness were passing acquaintances at best. When there'd been any cleaning done, I'd been the one to do it. No one came to greet me, which meant she wasn't here. I wondered if she'd found a new roommate yet, but it didn't look like it. Everything lying about was hers, or stuff I'd left behind. With a sigh, I set about cleaning up.

I was washing dishes when she came home in a familiar rasping click of seven locks. Entering, she squeaked at the sight of a strange guy with short hair standing in her kitchen, then yanked a gun out of her purse, leveling it at my head. I grinned. "Shooting the maid? No wonder the place is such a fucking mess, Mari."

Terror turned to delighted shock, and she shouted, "_Que pinga estas haciendo aqui?_" What the fuck are you doing here? And then, "_Dios mio estoy feliz de verte!_" My God, am I glad to see you! And I suddenly had my arms full of Mariana Olivares. We laughed and hugged hard. She's such a little thing, but as tough as gut rope, and worn like it, too, frayed at the edges from overuse. I'd forgotten how frizzy her hair looked with the constant bleaching. She'd never been pretty, like me, but that wasn't what the johns were interested in.

Finally, she let go and pushed me back. "Scott Summers - _estupido cingado come mierda!_ Why you come back _here_? And when did you cut your hair?"

"I cut it a while ago," I lied, and, "I had to see that you were okay."

"I'm okay! Now get your pretty ass gone before Jack - _ese come mierda_ - finds out you was here. I told him I don' know where you'd gone. And I don' wanna know, either, so don' tell me, eh? You go back where you're safe."

Sighing, I ran a hand over my face. "Okay. But here." I pulled a wad of bills out of the inner waistband of my underwear where I'd stashed them for safekeeping, and pushed them into her hands.

"What the fuck!"

"Just take it; you need it. Don't argue with me, woman. I'm not going to starve. And I want you to leave. There's enough money there to take you a long way away from here, and feed you too." I'd been saving it from the money that Xavier had given me but that I rarely spent.

"And what am I supposed to do if I leave, eh?"

"I don't know. Just go somewhere else. Go to Podunk, Montana and wait tables for all I care. Just get the fuck out of here." I grabbed her wrists. "Promise me. Promise you'll leave, and promise you'll call me when you get somewhere safe." I shoved a piece of paper into the pocket of her red vinyl jacket. "That's a number where you can reach me. If you go far enough, Jack won't bother to come after you."

"Scotty . . . ."

"Promise."

"She sighed. "Okay, okay. I'll go. Just get your ass out of here before you land us both in neck-deep shit."

I kissed her cheek and rubbed my thumbs across them, under her eyes, smoothing away the dark circles of smeared liner and mascara. "Love you, babe."

"_Te quiero, ojos que matan._" Love you, too, Killer Eyes. "Now go."

So I picked up the little plastic grocery bag of things that I'd packed earlier to take back with me, kissed her cheek again, and left. The bag held very little: a pair of jeans that I especially liked, torn at the knees but well broken-in, a couple of favorite CDs, and the blue woven pullover that she'd given me over a year ago for my birthday. It was late afternoon by the time I'd returned to the mansion, all set to defend my impromptu excursion to the Village . . . but no one was there. I made myself tea and sat down at the puzzle table in Xavier's den, working on it for a while until my eyes began to cross and it was time for dinner. I ate alone that night, surfed the Web for a few hours after, then retired to bed early. I understood better now why the professor might have opened his home to others. The place was damn eerie with only me and the cook, and she'd left at seven. Charity could go both ways. He gave me a place to sleep and an education. I kept him company.

The next day - the third since the angel boy had left - things got back to normal. Xavier came home around mid-morning, and we took up lessons again after lunch. For a while, we discussed the study assignments he'd given me, then he had me fetch down the game of Risk and set up the pieces. Bemused, I did so. Usually, we played in the evenings. But that wasn't the end of the day's surprises. When the board was set up, he used the intercom to call in a guy I'd never seen before. "Scott, I want you to meet Special Agent Fred Duncan, of the Federal Bureau of Investigations."

Holy shit. The fucking FBI. I'd been betrayed again just when I'd begun to trust, and came within inches of bolting out the door on instinct. But Xavier's voice in my head held me immobile. _Have no fear, Scott. You are not in trouble of any kind, I assure you. Agent Duncan is here at my request. I want you to beat him at _Risk_, if you can._

How very . . . odd. But after a polite introduction, the agent and I sat down to play _Risk_. And as the professor had asked, I beat him. Barely, but I managed. Instead of looking annoyed though, he sat back and steepled his hands in front of his face. "You say Mr. Summers here just began playing two months ago, Charles?"

"Indeed."

"He's Chris Summers' son, all right. Has the same gift for strategy."

I jerked upright and for a moment, shock stole my voice; I could barely take in air enough. But then I managed to get out, "You know - knew - my father?"

"We served together at the tail end of the Vietnam War; I first met him in '72 when he was released from a POW camp after six months. He walked out with his chin up. I'll never forget that. The rest had their heads down. His wasn't."

I just blinked because I didn't know what to say. I hadn't even known my father had been a POW. But he'd come out with his chin up? It was a mental image I clung to. "What else can you tell me about him?" My voice sounded tight and high to my own ears. "I was only eight when he died. I don't remember a lot."

Agent Duncan stayed through supper and told me stories about my father and his time as a pilot until the US had pulled out of 'Nam in '73. He told me about the moldy cheese he'd kept in his helmet to supplement MREs until the whole helmet had stank of cheese. He told me about his stubborn fondness for his mustache. And he told me about his decision to try for the SR-71 program after the war was over - he'd flown in at his own expense from Germany just to submit an application. And he'd been accepted as a Habu pilot, made it into that coveted club. My father had flown a Blackbird. I'd never known that, or if I had, I'd forgotten that I'd known it.

How unfair, that the man across the table remembered my own father better than I did. All I had left was a memory of us putting together puzzles, and of him teaching me to ride a bike with blue-and-white streamers in the handlebars. He'd run behind me down the little street of our air force base, his hand on the back of the bike seat, holding me up - or telling me that he was holding me up - until I realized he wasn't. He was just running. And I was balancing the bike all by myself - riding without training wheels. "You can do it, Scott!"

Right then, only half way through the meal, I had to get up and leave, driven by shame and pain. My father had been a soldier. I'd just been a whore. I cried in my room for half an hour until the professor came up to knock on my door. "Scott, may I come in?" he asked through the wood, using his voice instead of invasive telepathy.

"Wait a minute," I called back, going into the bathroom to splash cold water on my tear-hot face. Then I opened the door.

His eyes were gentle and concerned. "Can I help?" I shook my head in answer and went to collapse on the edge of my bed. But I hadn't shut the door in his face, and he took that for an invitation, motoring inside and shutting the door himself. Coming over to face me, he bent forward in his chair until he could grip my hand. "You're thinking that you've let him down, disgraced his memory. You're thinking you don't deserve to be his son." I didn't respond, because it wasn't a question. "You're wrong, you know."

"He'd disown me, if he knew what I was." I barely managed to choke it out. "I'd disgust him."

"Children do what they must to survive. You were alone and out of options. But you grabbed on with both hands to the first chance you had to escape. That's not a defeatist attitude, Scott." He tilted his head and regarded me for a long moment. "I think he'd understand. He was a POW."

"Agent Duncan said he walked away with his chin up."

"So did you. You're a very strong young man, Mr. Summers."

I didn't believe him, but I didn't want to talk about it. "How'd you find a guy who knew my dad?"

"Chance. Agent Duncan and I have worked together for some time, and in securing your official documents, I learned that your father had been an Air Force pilot. I knew that Fred had served in the Air Force before he joined the Bureau, so I mentioned your father to him and it was pure chance that they'd served together. After Hank told me what you'd done in New Hampshire, I began to think about that, and decided to bring Fred here. I wanted his professional opinion."

It took me a moment to sort through all that. "His professional opinion about what?"

"Your strategic talent."

"My . . . what?"

"You have a rare gift for discerning patterns, Scott. I began to suspect something of the kind when we first started putting together puzzles. You were extraordinarily good - uncanny. But I didn't know in what directions your talent might extend. So I tested you."

"Tested me?"

"The puzzles, the games: Risk, chess, backgammon, Scrabble. Even the assignments I was giving you in logical deduction." He smiled. "After the incident in New Hampshire, I realized where your real talents lay: strategy and leadership. Put simply, you have a great natural gift, which - given what Fred told me tonight - you quite probably inherited from your father."

I just blinked, because I had absolutely nothing to say.

"I believe you may be a tactical prodigy." He smiled faintly. "I will have to find you some real war games, I think, to test that hypothesis."

Two blinks this time. "That's . . . absurd."

"Is it?"

Surprise transformed into anger. I didn't want my chain yanked. "I'm not any kind of fucking _prodigy_, professor! That's Hank."

"Yes, Hank is certainly well beyond average. But don't underestimate yourself. You are far smarter than you believe. And Hank has frequently remarked to me on the sharpness of your mind."

"He has?" But I remembered what he'd said three days ago in the jet: that my wits were more dangerous than my knives.

"I know," Xavier continued, "that you find it very hard to believe that you might somehow be special. But you are, Scott. You are special. Gifted." He waited a moment, and when I didn't respond - because I couldn't; I was too full of conflicting emotions - he continued, "Today has given you a lot to process . I'll go now and leave you alone for a bit. Agent Duncan has told me that he'd be happy to talk to you more about your father whenever you're ready. And Scott - when you turn eighteen, you'll have a sizable bank account from both your parents' social security and life insurance benefits. Resources all your own. You are not my charity. I suggest you stop thinking of yourself that way."

And he left me there. Being early in December, it was already dark outside, and cold, but I went onto the balcony anyway to smoke a whole pack of cigarettes and stare at the sky overhead. Was there a heaven? Did we become angels when we died? Could we see the lives of those we'd left behind?

I hoped not. Whatever Xavier had said, I still knew the truth. My father had been a soldier, a pilot, a hero. He'd been brave. He'd been unbreakable. What was I compared to that?

Nothing. Nothing at all.

* * *

><p><strong>Notes:<strong> Many thanks to Rob for the street Spanish and Dex for clarification on rations. And Agent Duncan's first name was never given in _Children of the Atom_ that I could find, but David says it's Fred. :)


	6. Bethlehem

"The professor tells me that you're in charge of the stables."

Almost jumping out of my skin, I swung around to face the newcomer, a curry brush brandished in front of me like a weapon. His eyebrows went up and he raised both hands in surrender. "Don't shoot, sheriff."

Warren Worthington. I'd forgotten how deep his voice was. And how big his wings were. They'd carry him places I could never hope to go, places where people like me served the meals and the booze and their bodies for entertainment. Mere animated meat, all thoughts, dreams and aspirations beaten out of them by the impossibility of escape.

It had been ten days since the events in New Hampshire, and a week since things at the mansion had truly calmed down enough for me to grow curious about the man I'd saved. So I'd spent an afternoon surfing the internet, reading old business reports and gossip columns about the Worthingtons, and Warren. He was an American prince. Even the professor's wealth was unimpressive compared to his.

And I'd seriously thought he might become my fellow student? My friend?

What a joke.

Now, I turned back to my horse and continued my work. I wondered what he was doing here at the mansion, less than a week from Christmas. Didn't he have family? "Yeah," I answered at last, remembering that he'd asked me a question. "I'm in charge of the stables. Sort of."

"How sort of?" He'd come closer, moving so that he could see my face, and the proximity of his voice startled me once more.

I covered it well. "It's not like I know a hell of a lot about horses," I explained. "But I like them. And the professor can't keep the place clean himself."

"Doesn't he have grooms for that?" Warren slouched elegantly against the edge of the stall, moving his wings out of the way. Those wings might be pretty, but they must be a royal pain in the ass, too.

"I guess I'm the groom," I replied.

"I thought you were a student?"

"That, too." I wondered why he was still hanging around talking to me.

"How old are you?"

It was nosey, but the fact that he'd asked at all surprised me enough that I answered before I thought about it. "I turned sixteen in October."

"Ah. A Libra - or a Scorpio? No, don't tell me. A Scorpio." He was grinning.

I stopped currying my gelding to glare. "I don't believe in that horoscope shit."

The smile widened. "_Definitely_ a Scorpio."

Shaking my head, I returned to my work. December or not, the work had made me hot and I pulled my sweatshirt over my head, tossing it on a stool. The t-shirt beneath stuck to my back and chest and I could feel his eyes move over my body. It made me uncomfortable. "Did you want something?" Irritation brought the question out sharply.

His eyes flicked up from my body to my face and he pushed his shoulder off the stall wall to walk over. "I have a horse. Well, two of them, actually, but I think I'll only bring one. The professor said I should speak with you about it." I must have been gaping like a fish, because he added, "He said that you'd know which stalls are empty, and where there's space in the tack room for my saddle, etcetera and so-forth."

So he was coming to school here after all? And the truth would out at last. With a prospective real student, I'd been relegated to hired help, and living here like I was, I didn't even have the right to tell him to take care of his own damn horse. So I turned back to mine - or rather, I turned back to the horse I was permitted to ride. "All four stalls at the end of the row behind us are empty. Mare or gelding?"

"Stallion, actually. That's part of the problem. I have a gelding, but I'd rather bring the stallion, and he'll require a box stall."

"Fucking great," I muttered. All I needed was his damn mouthy stallion trying to take a bite out of me every time I passed that stall door.

He must have overheard my comment because he added, "I could bring the gelding, but he was my first horse and he's old now. I think he's earned his quiet pasture days." He moved even closer, right up next to me and laid a hand on my horse's neck, patting him to keep him from spooking. "Also, Charles suggested that if I brought the stallion, he'd be willing to forgo stable charges in exchange for having El Sid breed his mares. He's pure Spanish Andalusian. I think poor Charles was drooling at the chance for some Andalusian crosses."

I didn't have a fucking clue what an 'Andalusian' was, but I'd have bet good money it was the Ferrari of the horse community. "Sounds peachy," I said now.

"Actually, he's a grey, not peach."

It took me a minute to recognize that he'd just tried to make a joke, bad as it was, then almost against my will, my lips tipped upward. He clapped his hands in apparent delight. "Splendid! I was starting to wonder if you knew how to smile at all! That's the first one I've seen on your face."

It was? But smiling wasn't something I'd had much cause to do, and my face didn't automatically twist into that expression. Most often, it showed no expression at all. I'd worked hard for that, and now turned away, tossing the brush onto the stool with my shirt so I could pick up a blanket to spread over my horse's back. Warren helped without being asked, then nodded to the horse. "What's his name?"

"The professor named him Thunder Major, but I don't like that." I shrugged, feeling guilty for the critique. "It seemed kind of silly for such a quiet horse. I just call him Lardbutt."

I wasn't prepared for Warren's reaction. He bent over, wings fluttering spasmodically as he laughed so hard he almost couldn't breathe. "Lardbutt! I love it! Priceless! Not one ounce of pretense at all!"

"Well, he's _fat_," I said, bemused. Granted, the name was funny and had been meant to be, but it wasn't worth busting a gut.

"Oh, oh." Finally, Warren managed to calm himself and unbend, wiping tears out of his eyes. "Oh, my. I nicknamed mine El Sid, and you nicknamed yours Lardbutt!" And he went off into another peal of laughter. But the humor didn't seem vicious; he was genuinely amused. Shaking his head finally, he ran a palm over his mouth. "In any case, do you think we can find a box stall for El Sid?"

'We'? What was with the 'we' shit? I knew damn well who'd be shoveling the manure. But I wiped dust off my hands and said, "Come on. The box stalls are on the other aisle." It wasn't like I had a real choice here, so I showed him the two stalls and he looked them both over for the solidity of the wood and any rough sections that might leave splinters in his precious horse's hide, then settled on the farther of the two and followed me to the tack room to decide where there was space for his equipment. We ended up having to store some of what was there, stuff that Warren said was so old it ought to be tossed. But what did I know? "You really are unfamiliar with stables, aren't you?"

"I'd never been on a horse in my life until I got here," I answered truthfully, but didn't elaborate.

"How did you wind up running the stable?"

"Like I said, Xavier can't do it. And I like horses. They're . . . sensible." Then I realized what I'd just said and grinned even as he caught the unintentional pun a beat behind.

"Horse sense!" he exclaimed.

"Yeah. Horse sense. Anyway, the old groom had to retire last year. It was before I came. There was another guy who'd been hired part time, but I don't know if he had too much to do, or was just lazy. Anyway, I realized he wasn't cleaning out the stalls all the way, especially back in the corners where Xavier couldn't see. Sometimes he'd just lay down new hay on the old. I found fungus in the frogs of my horse's hooves, so I started checking the others. It was really bad for some of them. We had to call a vet. When I told the professor what I'd found, he fired the guy." The shame of that came back and I felt it burn my ears and cheeks. "I wasn't trying to get him fired; I just wanted him to do his job better."

Warren had straddled a bench, his hands gripping the end while the tips of his white wings trailed in dirty hay. He studied me. "Scott, what you're describing is a _serious_ oversight. You could have wound up with lamed horses. It wasn't just a matter of not doing his job. It was a matter of cruelty to animals who had no voice of their own. He deserved to be fired."

I kicked at the wall absently. "That's why I said something in the first place - the horses. It wasn't like they could complain. But the guy had some kids at home, y'know?"

Sighing, Warren looked away, out the door. "Responsibility is heavy," he muttered, but I wasn't sure he was talking to me. "Still, Scott - people make their own beds and it's not your place to wash their sheets for them."

I just blinked at him in surprise. It wasn't what I'd expected out of him. "So you're going to do your own damn laundry while you're here, so I don't have to?"

Now it was his turn for bafflement at the sudden leap of topic. "Why would you do my laundry?"

I threw up my hands. "Well, who else is going to do it? The professor has a cook and a maid, but Hank and I do our own laundry and stuff, and I do Hank's when he's too busy with his rotations, so I guess I'll get yours, too, like I'm getting your freaking horse to take care of."

The white wings rose and fluttered with agitation like a bird's might, and Warren pulled in his chin to study me from under blond brows before saying, "Actually, considering the fact that you seem to be between grooms at the moment, I'd planned to suggest to Charles that I bring in one of my own - who would take care of my horse and yours, too. Frankly, Scott, you don't have the experience for this job long term, even if you do have the conscientiousness. I doubt that Charles planned to saddle you with it permanently - pun intended - so I'd had no intention of asking you to take care of my horse. As for my laundry . . . I confess, I hadn't expected to do it myself, but if that's the way of things here, I'd like to think household appliances can't be _that_ difficult, though the one time I tried to run a vacuum cleaner, it chewed up a corner of my mother's imported, top knot-grade Bokhara Persian rug. Of course, I was six at the time. The maid wasn't happy, and neither was my mother. I wasn't permitted to 'help' again."

I wasn't sure if I should laugh at that or not, but he was grinning himself, so I grinned back. "What's a Bokhara Persian rug?"

"A type of pattern - the classic type, in fact. It's what you think of when you think 'Persian rug.' Dull, if you asked me." He grew serious then. "Charles told me that you were to be my fellow student, not my servant. I have plenty of servants. I'm not interested in another. I am interested in a friend from whom I don't have to hide these." He fluttered the wings again, like anyone else might flutter fingers in emphasis. Big emphasis.

"I don't live in your world," I replied bluntly because I was so taken by surprise, I didn't have a chance to figure out a more politic answer. "I don't know how to play golf."

That made him laugh again, if not as hard as at the name I'd given my horse. "Good God! Golf! Well, if you'd really like to learn how to play, I'd be glad to teach you!"

And that was how I wound up learning golf from Warren Worthington, III.

* * *

><p>That week before Christmas was one of the strangest I'd ever experienced. Warren and I spent ninety percent of our waking time together - at lessons, around the mansion, and even out Christmas shopping in the city, ferried by his chauffeur. He seemed bound and determined to be my friend, attacking it with the same fervor some people decided to quit smoking. It might have annoyed, had his company been less enjoyable, but he got my backhanded jokes, and - as I'd thought that very first morning after his rescue - he was plain <em>nice<em> . . . the kind of guy who held the door for little old ladies and left out milk for stray cats. He defied stereotypes. We both did.

He still didn't know what I'd been before I'd come to Xavier's, but it was hard to camouflage the enormous discrepancy in our social backgrounds. I asked him once if he didn't worry what his friends would think - his real friends, people from his own social class - about him hanging out with me, not to mention his doing his own laundry. He'd shaken his head ruefully and measured Tide into the plastic scoop before dumping it into the washer bowl under my supervision. "What friends?" he'd replied. "There are two types of people who want my attention, Scott. Those who hope to get something from me - money, reputation by association - and those who hate my guts and want to bring me down. Then there's you. You have no idea how rare you are. You don't want a damn thing from me."

"Except the Springsteen CDs you borrowed."

Warren grinned. "Yeah, yeah. I'll give them back this afternoon." I helped him load his clothes in the washer, then he shut the lid and turned to face me. "Look, I'm the one the rest of the sorry little wankers want to be seen with, not the other way around. I _define_ cool." But his smile was as bitter as it was ironic. "They can think whatever the hell they want. I'll name you a friend if I want to." And we went up to the solar for another lesson in irons and golf balls.

For the next few days, I pondered what he'd said - that he defined cool. He'd been joking of course, but it was something I hadn't considered before. When one occupied the top rung of the Social Ladder, it resulted in incredible pressure to stay there, but also a certain freedom to set one's own parameters - all determined by a hair-trigger instinct for social Russian Roulette. And for whatever reason, Warren had decided to gamble on me. Maybe it was just for gratitude; I'd saved his life.

In any case, he dragged me out to a party on Christmas Eve after we'd opened presents at the mansion with the professor. Hank was off visiting his family in Deerfield, Illinois, so it was just the three of us. Warren had no reason to go home. His parents were in Bangkok and he didn't expect them back until after New Year's. So when the present-opening was over, he took me off to some party where he flirted with every girl in sight and got so smashed that I almost had to carry him back to the limousine. I hadn't understood his desperate need for oblivion in a bottle until I'd thought about how it must feel to have living parents who may as well have been dead. I was an orphan in truth. Warren was one in effect. 'You're eighteen now, Warren. You must have friends you'd rather spend Christmas with.' His father's words on the phone from Thailand. But what the man had meant was, 'I have more important places to be than home with you, and you're a semi-adult, so entertain yourself.'

He'd entertained himself by getting too drunk to see straight.

Maybe I'd have fought with my parents, too, if they'd lived, but death had preserved my pristine memory of them. I could dimly recall my last Christmas as a son, not an inconvenience. We'd gone to midnight mass, then home again, Mom and Dad singing carols in the front seat while Alex and I had fallen asleep in the back. Christmas morning had brought presents and candy-canes and ham for lunch, just the four of us, cocooned by snow in cramped base housing, but we hadn't cared. Alex and I had received a new sled, and that was all that had mattered to us - a new sled, Pooh mittens, fresh Nebraska snow outside, and parents to cheer us on.

It's such small things that I remember.

I made Warren leave the party around midnight, and asked the driver to find a Catholic church nearby for mass. I didn't even know if Warren was Catholic. Probably not. And God knew, I hadn't been inside a church in years, but this was also the first Christmas in years that I'd felt like celebrating hope. So I splashed water on his face in the cathedral bathroom and we went in half way through mass to sit in the back. I didn't take the sacrament because I hadn't confessed. He didn't take it because he'd fallen asleep. When mass was over, I had his driver return us to the mansion while I sang carols in the back under my breath.

_"The first Noel the angel did say was to certain poor shepherds in fields as they lay . . . ." _

It was the wee hours of Christmas morning and I had a half-drunk angel zonked in my lap. What wonderful irony. He was asleep, so I slipped my hand beneath the collar of his shirt and touched the edge of bound wings. Soft feathers. Hope.

_"O little town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie; above thy deep and dreamless sleep the silent stars go by. Yet in thy dark streets shineth the everlasting light; the hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight." _

* * *

><p>"I've got the mother of all headaches."<p>

It was about two in the afternoon on Christmas day. Hank was due back in an hour - he actually had to work tomorrow - and the professor had gone to pick him up from the airport. I'd decided to stick around so someone would be here when Warren woke. Now, he'd come into the den where I was lying on the floor, messing with the pieces of a new war game the professor had given me for Christmas. With presents opened on Christmas Eve - apparently a Xavier family tradition - there'd been no reason for us to rise early.

I glanced up and offered my bottle of spring water. "Drink. You'll feel better." He staggered over to take it. "And don't cry on my shoulder. You're the fucking idiot who got plastered last night. I have no pity."

"Fuck you." But he opened the bottle and drank. I didn't make any of the other remarks I could have, just returned to my game. He sat down beside me to watch.

"You wanna play?" I asked.

"Scott, I haven't got a goddamn clue what to do with all those little squares of cardboard."

"I'll show you."

He thought about it, then shrugged and said, "Okay. Why not?"

"Great. Now, look at the pieces. Here's the unit name, here's the size, here's the troop quality, and here's the movement allowance, normal and extended . . . . "

I'd barely done more than explain game rules and set up the board by the time Hank and the professor were back. Hank didn't get past the den; instead, he plopped down with us, delighted by my new toy. "Splendiferous! The Battle of Zama!"

Warren gave up his position immediately - his eyes had been about to cross, in any case - and Hank and I played. Hank was Scipio; I was Hannibal. I beat him around two in the morning, long after the professor had gone to bed. "I don't think history went that way," Warren remarked. He'd sat up with us through the whole game, needling Hank and half-watching DVDs of _It's a Wonderful Life_ and _Miracle on 34__th__ Street_. Was he hoping for his own Santa Claus to bring him a new existence?

Hank ignored him and said to me, "You have a definite knack for this," as he helped me put away the little colored squares in their Ziploc baggies. I just shrugged. The truth was he _didn't_ have a knack for it. I doubted West Point would have any interest in my application.

"How was Christmas at home?" I asked, to change the subject.

His smile was warm. "Delightful. Cold, but delightful. You will have to come with me to visit some time. My mother would dote on you. Perhaps this summer. You can see how a farm runs." He glanced around to include Warren in the invitation. "Both of you can come."

"Oh, lovely." Warren snorted. "Will we get to milk the cows and feed the pigs?"

"Don't be a jackass," I said. What bug did Warren have up his butt? He'd been flat _mean_ ever since Hank had gotten back, which didn't seem at all like the Warren I'd come to know this past week. Maybe it was just that Hank got along with his parents. On the way to our rooms later, I pulled him aside. "What was with you tonight? Are you mad because Hank got to go home and you didn't?"

Glancing away, he fluttered his wings, which told me he was nervous for some unaccountable reason. "I'm just tired."

"Bullshit. "

He sighed. "Okay, maybe I am a bit jealous." A pause. "You seemed glad to have Hank back."

"I like him," I said simply. "He's a nice guy. So are you - usually."

"Ooh. Ow. Slap on the wrist noted, Mr Manners." But it wasn't said with heat, just his usual dry humor. Abruptly, he sighed again and rubbed at the bridge of his nose. The hallway lights had been dimmed for evening and they cast shadows on his face, drawing tired lines under his eyes. "It's been a shitty holiday."

That stark admission touched me for some reason. "I know," I told him, and felt guilty because, for me, this had been the best holiday I'd had in a long while. I wished I knew something to make him feel better, but I didn't, so we walked to our rooms in silence. When we reached my room, I turned to face him. "Can I ask something weird?"

"I don't know," he replied. "Can you?" Annoyed, I boxed his arm, and he grinned. "Sorry, couldn't resist. What'd you want to know?" His expression was serious and polite.

I blurted out the request fast before I lost my nerve. "Can I touch one of your wings?" I hadn't forgotten the furtive feel in the limousine the previous night - and curiosity killed the cat.

He was studying me, caught between amusement and surprise. Then he flexed a wing and bent it around in silent invitation. Light poured through, pure and white, as if I were standing inside a cloud. Reaching out, I ran fingers along the feathers. They were as soft as I recalled up near the bone, but the pinions were stiffer. "Does it feel strange to have them touched?" I asked him.

He ran his own hand down the skin of my arm where I'd pushed up the sleeves of my sweater. "Does that feel strange?"

Actually, it did, and I flinched minutely. I didn't like to be touched. But aloud I said, "No."

"It feels the same for me. Or maybe more like this" - and he moved his hand up to stroke my hair. That time, I couldn't conceal the flinch. He frowned. "What's wrong, Scott?"

"Nothing," I lied. "I'm just . . . a little funny about my hair."

I could see in his face that he didn't believe me, but he let it go. "The feathers insulate the skin - like hair."

I ran a hand along the top again. "They're soft here." I regretted it as soon as I said it.

But he smiled and, reaching up, yanked out a fluffy covert feather from near the joint, then offered it to me. "Merry Christmas."

I took it. My own personal angel feather. "Thanks."

* * *

><p>"To beginner's luck!" Warren said, and toasted me with the martini he was legally too young to buy but had ended up with anyway.<p>

"Whatever," I muttered, embarrassed, and raised my own drink that I had even less business consuming. "Beginner's luck."

We were in the lounge of his country club, and I felt as out of place as mud on a lace hem. It was the first time we'd taken our golf lessons outside the mansion. Previously we'd worked on a hitting mat in Xavier's solar, where Warren had shown me how to hold a club, how to swing, and how to putt. Today, two days after Christmas while the weather was unseasonably warm, Warren had deemed me ready to try the covered driving range at his country club. No one had expected me to do well, least of all him, yet I'd shown some kind of knack for it. "Beginner's luck!" he'd dubbed it, genuinely pleased, then taken me into the clubhouse for a drink. I'd expected a coke, not a cocktail.

We weren't there long before Warren spotted some old guy he had to give regards to. "Sorry," he told me. "I'll be back as soon as I can. Cameron!" he called to one of the young men standing not far away. The guy turned. He was smaller than Warren, with fine bones and neat hands. Warren drew him over with an arm across his shoulders. "Scott, this if Cameron Hodge; originally his family's from Boston, but his father relocated to Manhattan and has worked for my father for years. We practically shared the same crib and bottle. Cam, this is Scott Summers, of Westchester. Please keep him company for a bit; I need to pay my respects to Max Southern. Scott's new here, but he's my friend." And he grinned at me. I remembered what he'd said, that he'd never had any real friends, just people who wanted to use or abuse him. Until me.

Jesus - I had a _friend_, one besides Mariana. Two friends, actually, counting Hank. And they didn't even want to fuck me.

Warren then disappeared into the crowd. It still amazed me how he could strap down his wings, don a jacket, and blend right in. I didn't have any mutation and I still didn't blend. The other fellow - Hodge - could smell it. Smiling, he leaned against one of the artfully rough lodge-style columns in the clubhouse lounge, studying me over the rim of his own drink. He couldn't be much older than Warren. Didn't the authorities care about underage drinking here, or did the law only apply to mere mortals? "How long have you known Warren?" Hodge asked me.

"About a month," I replied - stretching the truth, though any answer beyond 'forever' would've marked me. The mere fact I was a new face marked me.

Hodge was still smiling. It had a nasty edge. I'd seen that smile on the faces of johns who'd liked to make me guess. But then he smothered the smile and played at nonchalance. "Where are you from? Originally."

- which told me right there he knew I wasn't from Westchester, whatever Warren had said. And how did I answer? I'd been an orphan shuffled around foster homes, and before that, a military brat. I'd lived everywhere from Alaska to Germany to Florida. I settled on the last place. "Nebraska - Omaha."

"Ah. Are you related to the Dodges? The Ricketts? The Blumpkins?"

I just blinked. Who the hell were they? Then I remembered - the main road through Omaha was Dodge street, and slowly the history pounded into me at Boy's Town came back. They'd been a military family who'd established themselves in Omaha in the 1800s. And hadn't Nebraska Furniture Mart been founded by somebody named Blumpkin? And the Ricketts ... I knew them. T.D. Ameritrade, among other things - but they weren't from Omaha originally. I wondered if Hodge knew that. Maybe it didn't matter. All of them were filthy rich.

Definitely not me.

"No," I replied. "I'm related to the Summerses."

That took him a minute, then he grinned. "Touché." And he sipped his martini. "What's a Midwestern boy like you doing in New York?"

"Going to school." And that was the truth - it just wasn't why I'd come here to begin with.

His eyebrows rose. "School in Westchester? Scholarship?"

Oh, yes, he'd nailed me as a poor relation, all right. He'd probably done that inside sixty seconds. And I wasn't sure how to answer the question - decided to go for the literal. "No." And said nothing else. The less information given, the less they had to crucify you with.

He nodded and seemed to run out of things to say, and I'd never been good at small talk, so we stood there, all awkward. He was studying me. After an uncomfortably long stretch, he said, "I see War hasn't lost his taste for blue eyes."

"What?" I should have seen it coming. I should have known. But safety had lulled me, dulled my wits.

Hodge's thin lips tipped upward, and he dropped his eyes to his cocktail glass. "Oh, everyone knows how much Warren likes boys with baby blues. He must have been hot for you from the minute he saw you. He's got the seduction down to an art." Hodge's eyes finally rose. Blue like mine. "Has he given you a wing feather yet?"

He knew about Warren's wings?

"It's usually nonstop attention," he added, "parties, dinners, a feather . . . sex."

Being shot must feel like this - a hard punch that ripped through without immediate pain, followed by the sharp burn that made one gasp. Or maybe that was just the effect of half a martini finished in a single swallow. I set the glass down on a dark-wood end table and walked out.

I didn't think, just walked. Fortunately, the clubhouse wasn't far from the country club entrance, and this was New York, urban wonderland. Passing through the gates, I exited the private privilege of greenery into the real world. Noisy and concrete dun, loud splashes of color, signs and cars and too many people. I crossed the four-lane road to a large convenience store whose name didn't even register and ducked inside, glanced around for a men's room, then made a bee-line for it down the store aisle. Opening the door, I was met by a heady perfume of old piss and fresh disinfectant. There was no one in there, thank God, and I let the door fall closed behind me, then just stood there, arms wrapped about myself. The fluorescent light illuminated all the dirty corners, and brown paper towels had been dropped in the bottom of one of the urinals, plugging it up. It stank. There was a used Band-Aid on the floor, a button, and a movie ticket stub. The place was cleaner than I was used to, but still recognizable in its plebeian efficiency. No dark wood paneling and elegant lamps on lemon-oiled lowboys with scented soap at the washbasin. This was a john, plain and simple. Nondescript and common, like me.

I started to shake and barely made it into one of the stalls before I threw up in the toilet. The former contents of my stomach left an orange mess in the bowl, and the smell was metallic-sweet, making me gag again.

Push it all out. Rid my body of it. Hope had no place in my life. I'd been deluding myself, shamming. I was a lie right down to the blue Shetland wool sweater and the button down shirt on my back. Pulling the sweater over my head, I wiped my mouth with it, then dropped it on the dirty bathroom floor. Flushing the toilet, I went out again but wasn't ready to face the world, so I went into another stall - the handicapped stall with more space and aluminum railings - shut and locked the door, then collapsed on the cold tile, knees drawn up and arms around them.

I don't know how long I sat there. A few guys came to use the urinals, but no one needed a stall, and no one noticed me. After a while, I quit shaking and my mind cleared a bit. I pulled out my wallet to see how much money I had, and how far it would take me. It didn't occur to me to return to the mansion. Even after living there since September, I couldn't fathom Xavier's generosity towards me. It made no sense in my world. People didn't just do things for you, and I'd kept waiting for the other shoe to drop. Now, it had. The professor belonged to the same social class as Warren - and I was just a whore. I might look better, dolled up in pretty clothes and trained to play golf, but I had no illusions about where I fell in the larger scheme of things. Xavier might not have wanted me for himself, and Hank's proclivities didn't run in that direction, but I didn't doubt the professor would overlook Warren's pursuit of me if that's what it took to keep a real student at his school.

How funny. Four months ago, I'd have been grateful for such an arrangement. Now, the prospect of it set me on edge to flee. Had I changed so much?

I had only fifty-seven dollars and some odd change. It didn't seem like much, and I realized how spoiled I'd become. But I still remembered how to make it last. First, I'd have to ditch these clothes. Nice slacks and a button-down gave all the wrong signals. That meant a visit to a coin laundry to steal a few things. Where I'd go after that, I had no idea, but I couldn't stay in the city. Even if I could have eluded Xavier, I doubted I could elude Jack Winters for long. Or rather, the places I could hide from Xavier were the same places where Jack had found me in the first place. I wondered, briefly, if Mariana were still in town. Maybe we could leave together - start a new life. She could work in a supermarket checkout and I'd bag groceries. At least I had a valid picture ID now, thanks to Xavier, and I was sixteen. I didn't have to be in school if I didn't want to be.

My mind was racing over all these things as I was checking the money in my wallet, and I almost didn't notice the slip of paper that fluttered to the floor. Instinct made me snag it and glance at the writing. A phone number I remembered Hank giving to me. His cell phone. Almost, I crumpled it up and threw it in the toilet, but some scrap of that horse sense I so prized stopped me.

Hank wasn't Xavier. And he sure as hell wasn't Warren. He was a farmboy from Illinois with big feet and a bigger brain. And he'd never shafted me. Never. He'd never lied to me, either, that I knew of.

_Don't_, some part of me whispered. _You can't trust anyone. _

But I'd just been thinking about trusting Mariana. I looked down at the number again, fingering the paper. I had a cell phone of my own, but it was in Warren's car. I did have a little change, and there was usually a pay phone around places like this. I left the john to go look for it, found it outside where the noise of traffic made it hard to hear.

_Why are you doing this? _I asked myself as I dropped in the coins and placed the call. Hank would try to talk me out of running, I was sure. Was that what I wanted? But I had only fifty-seven dollars, and traveling cost money. I couldn't stay in the city with a pissed pimp looking for me. Hank might at least give me some cash. I didn't have to take his advice along with it.

The phone rang several times. I'd almost decided to hang up when he answered. "Henry McCoy."

"Hank, it's Scott. I - "

"Scott! Where are you! My God, man, you have Warren and the professor so panicked they've called the police!"

Oh, shit. Just great. How long had it been since I'd left Warren at the clubhouse anyway? A couple hours? It couldn't be more than a couple hours.

"Scott? Are you there?"

"I'm here."

"_Where_ are you? And what happened?"

He sounded so genuinely worried, it threw me. "I don't . . . . I need some money, Hank. I need to split town. Can you give me some money and not tell Xavier?"

Dead silence for three beats, then he said, "Why are you running away?"

"I've just decided to leave."

"I am not a fool, Scott Summers. Neither are you. Talk to me."

"I thought you were on-call? Don't you have patients?" That diversion tactic begged the question of why I'd called him in the first place, of course.

"Yes, I'm on-call, but nothing's critical in the ER right at the moment, and this is important." A beat. "You're my friend. Talk to me."

And what did I say? Leaning up against the half-opaque side of the phone booth, I twisted and untwisted the phone cord around my wrist. I needed a cigarette. "I have to go. There's no place for me in their world, except doing what I did before. Maybe I don't want to do that anymore."

I could hear him breathe a minute, then he said, "Did something happen with Warren, Scott? Did he try to touch you - ?"

"He didn't do a damn thing! I just got my eyes opened, that's all! Now are you going to help me or not? I've got to get out of town."

"Of course, I'll help. But I want you to come to the hospital, Scott."

"I don't - "

"You come here, and I'll help. You said you wanted money, anyway. How did you expect me to get it to you? Carrier pigeon?"

That made me laugh for no good reason. "All right." I'd trusted him enough to call him, so I'd trust him enough to see him in person. "You're not going to phone the cops or Xavier and have them waiting for me?"

"No," he said. "I give you my word. You come here and let's talk. No cops. No professor." I twisted and untwisted the cord a few more times and thought about it. "Scott - ?"

"I'm still here. Okay. Fine. I'll come to the hospital to see you. But you betray me and I'll gut you, Monkey Toes."

"I'd never do that to you, Scott. Not ever. I'll see you soon."

It took me less than forty-five minutes to reach Columbia, but it took me almost two hours to get up the nerve to go inside. I watched the ER doors for a while, like I was casing the joint, then walked all around the building. Finally, I went in through the front doors, not the ER entrance, in order to approach from an unexpected direction. I'd see if he'd kept his word.

Apparently he had. I didn't see Xavier anywhere near the ER, and I looked in all the waiting rooms and even the johns. And there were no cop-types beyond the usual security guard. I finally made my presence known to one of the nurses and was pointed in Hank's direction. I've never seen anyone look so relieved as he did. "Thank God!" he said, gripping both my shoulders and shaking me a little. "I was afraid you'd changed your mind!"

He'd really been worried. That just blew my mind. Hank was no actor, or if he was, he'd been acting since the day we'd met and that defied even my paranoid reasoning. His relief had to be genuine. "I'm here now," I said simply, because I didn't want to let myself care about the fact that he'd been worried.

He was looking around. "I don't see Daphne - she's the resident in charge. I'm still on duty but just finished with a patient, and it's time for my break. Your timing was fortunate. Come on," and still gripping my shoulder as if he feared I'd disappear into thin air, he steered me out of the ER, back into the hospital proper and down to a bank of vending machines. Seeing them, my stomach growled loudly. I was starving and hadn't even thought about it.

He heard, and eyed me. "When was the last time you ate?"

"Breakfast?" But I'd thrown up most of that in the convenience store bathroom, and it was now late afternoon.

"Let's go to the canteen," he said. "Whatever you decide, you should do it on a full stomach."

I couldn't help but wonder if he'd get into deep shit for this, taking off while he was on duty, but I wouldn't turn down dinner. My stomach seconded the notion by growling again, and he shook his head. "Let's go, Scott."

After we'd gotten food and he'd paid, he took me to a table over in a corner of the big room. So far, he'd kept his word. No cops, no Xavier - and I'd kept my eyes open, too, just in case. Thus, when he asked, "Now what happened?" I decided to risk trusting him a little further. I told him everything, from my first conversation with Warren in the stable to the illuminating chat with Cameron Hodge in the clubhouse. "I've been an idiot, Hank," I concluded. "How could I have missed it?" It really did seem as plain as the nose on my face now. I'd been a hustler for a year and a half, but I'd overlooked a guy putting the moves on me?

Then again, as a hustler, the only moves made had been an exchange of cash. I wasn't used to being wined and dined, so to speak.

Hank had frowned his way through my entire tale. When I was done, he sighed and pushed away his now-empty salad plate. "This sounds . . . very odd, Scott. I barely know Warren, but I do know the professor. If he'd thought Warren might attempt to coerce you sexually, he'd have put an instant stop to it."

"Hank, they're from the same social class - "

"No, listen to me." He raised a hand. "Listen to me. You've had very little cause in your life to trust anyone, but please. Trust me on this. Charles Xavier is a man of his word, an ethical human being. He'd sooner slit his own throat than see you abused under his roof. Perhaps he had no idea what Warren had in mind, but I find that hard to believe."

So did I. Xavier was a telepath.

"I can only conclude," Hank said, "that Charles believes Warren to be harmless. The true snake in the grass seems to me to be this Cameron fellow. What makes you think he wasn't lying to you?"

It was a good question, but I'd known he wasn't. Well, not about most of it. Hustler instinct - the same that had kept me alive on the streets. Yet I wasn't sure how to explain that to Hank so I just shook my head and shrugged with one shoulder. "I just know." I looked off, studied the people coming and going - visitors, nurses, doctors, indefinable others. "He had blue eyes, too."

"And this proves . . . ?"

"I think he was involved with Warren. He knew about the wings."

"And if he was? Scott, did _jealousy_ as a motivating factor never occur to you?"

Of course it had occurred to me. I had no doubt that jealousy had been Hodge's motivation, but - "That doesn't make what he said not true."

Sighing, Hank removed his little glasses to rub at his eyes. "Something can be true and still be twisted. Whatever this fellow said, I can tell you this much. When Warren discovered that you had left, he ran out immediately to track you down, but couldn't. You're adept at disappearing; you've had to be, I suppose, but I doubt Warren had any idea of how or where to look. He drove all around the neighborhood for over an hour, Scott. Then he parked the car and flew. In broad daylight when he could be - and no doubt was - seen. Not finding you, he flew all the way back to Westchester, because it was faster, then he and the professor called the police. There was not, of course, anything the police could do beyond take information. Nonetheless, it demonstrates the depth of their concern. I cannot say what Warren's _intentions_ are towards you, but I can say that his panic struck me - and more importantly, struck the professor - as most genuine."

I didn't know what to think about that, just sat back and chewed on it for a while.

"Scott, will you at least talk to Xavier? He means you no harm. And should I be wrong about that, unlikely though I find it, I will help protect you from him myself. I give you my word."

I studied his face and mulled over his offer. No one would really call Hank a handsome man, but he had an aura of honesty that made him attractive. Betrayal wasn't a skill he'd ever learned, smart as he was. "Okay. I'll talk to him. But I'm not going back to the mansion."

"Fine - you can stay here at the hospital. Let me call him; I'm sure he'd be willing to come here."

"Tell him not to bring Warren."

So it was arranged. Hank called Xavier and then took me back to the ER floor, showing me where I could wait in a private family room. He didn't lock the door, but I checked, to be sure, then went over to stretch out on the couch. I was all shaky again, like I needed nicotine, but I didn't think they'd let me smoke in here. My world was spinning out of control and I didn't know what to do or who to believe.

When the door opened at last to admit Hank and the professor, I almost jumped out of my skin, then stood up fast. I'd been stupid to agree to this. Xavier was in the doorway. I couldn't get past him to flee. I was caught.

"Thank you, Henry," Xavier said, and motored in until he was well away from the door. It shut behind Hank. "Scott, the path to the door is clear. You could get out before I could reach you. But won't you sit back down on the couch instead, so we can talk?"

"Okay." And I sat down. He motored closer, but not too close. I knew he was reading my fear right out of my head, but since it meant he was keeping his distance, I didn't complain.

"Hank has told me some of what happened, and I talked with Warren before I came. Talked quite frankly with him, Scott." He leaned forward in his chair and studied me. "Warren knows nothing of your past. Nor have I told him. He has no idea why you reacted as you did today - he fears that you hate him now, that he disgusts you."

And how could I answer that? I couldn't say the idea of sex with Warren didn't disgust me. Then again, the idea of sex with anyone made me a bit sick to my stomach. "All I wanted was a friend," I said. "I just wanted a goddamn _friend_." My voice sounded small and pathetic even to my own ears.

Xavier sighed and spoke almost sadly, "I know, Scott - I know. Do you recall your very first day at my house, when I said that if anyone made unwanted sexual advances to you, you should come to me and I would deal with it?" Reluctantly, I nodded. "That hasn't changed."

"Then why didn't you do something about Warren! He wants in my pants!"

"Has he made any advances to you?"

"No. But you can read his mind! You know what he wants!"

"I usually try to avoid invading my students' mental privacy, yet I am well aware that Warren feels sexual attraction to you. We cannot, however, control what we _feel_. We can control how we _act_. Has he acted in a way that has made you uncomfortable?"

Angry, but constrained to be honest, I said, "No, he hasn't done anything."

Xavier nodded. "So I'd thought, but needed to be sure. What is intended and how it is perceived is not, always, the same, and I wanted to ascertain that he hadn't acted in a way that made you uncomfortable, however unintentionally."

I nodded, cautiously. "Okay."

"That means your flight this afternoon was entirely a result of what Cameron Hodge said?"

When put that way, it sounded harsh. "But Hodge was right - you admitted as much yourself!"

"You are confusing two different things, Scott - genuine affection that includes sexual interest, and pure lust. If I understand what Hank told me - and feel free to correct me if I do not - this Cameron Hodge implied that Warren intended merely to _seduce_ you. A notch on his bedpost."

He didn't go further, just stopped to let me chew on that. "And you're saying that's not true?" I asked. "But Warren gave me a feather, just like Hodge said!"

Xavier smiled faintly. "Oh, Warren may have his bag of tricks. I don't doubt that. But no, what Hodge implied is not true. Warren _likes_ you very much. Anything else is in addition to that." He caught my eyes and held them. "As difficult as it may be for you to believe, someone can be attracted to you sexually and still care about you as a person, like you, enjoy your company, even want to be your friend. Should you not give him a chance to explain his own feelings instead of accepting the assessment of a boy driven by probable jealousy?"

Feeling cornered, I didn't reply, just turned my face to the wall. Xavier's eyes slipped half-closed, then he said, "You doubt that you could trust anything Warren says, and wonder if you can trust anything I say. You fear being used. You fear that you matter only for your body. Deep down, you feel worthless, inadequate, isolated. Vulnerable."

All true. All too terrifyingly accurate. I felt myself move back, almost unconsciously, pressing against the rear of the couch - putting space between us. "I thought you respected your students' mental privacy?" I spat.

His eyes opened again. "I do, under normal circumstances. These are hardly normal. First, you are so upset, Scott, you are broadcasting loudly. I could hardly help but hear you." He bent his chin down and regarded me thoughtfully a moment. "Second, I want to understand - but not to influence. Your thoughts and decision are entirely your own. Since your arrival at my home, have you ever had cause to believe it otherwise?"

In fact, I hadn't. "Okay. But don't tell me what I feel. It pisses me off!"

"Fine - then you tell me. When you refuse to talk, how can I understand?

"I don't always know what the hell to say!"

A sharp nod. "Fair enough. And I'm sorry. If you don't know what to say, then can we at least agree that you'll tell me as much? Perhaps, together, we can figure out how you can express what you feel. I would far prefer it if you could tell me, not have me tell you."

An odd pact, but I nodded. "That sounds okay."

"Good. Now, back to Warren and your doubts regarding his motives. Has he told you yet about the 'Avenging Angel'?"

"No." But I remembered Xavier making a reference to that the morning we'd rescued him. Now, the professor was pulling several newspaper clippings out of a little pocket on the side of his wheelchair to hold them out. Clearly, he was going to let me approach him instead of the reverse. Still cautious, I rose to do so, taking the clippings and retreating to the couch to unfold them, look them over. Four articles, all about a mysterious winged figure effecting rescues up in New Hampshire - everything from scaring off a black bear from attacking hunters, to foiling a minor robbery. 'He told me he's an avenging angel,' one of those rescued explained to the paper. I almost laughed. "Who does he think he is? _Batman?_"

Xavier grinned faintly. "Bats don't have white wings, last I checked."

I waved one clipping. "Is this why you wanted us to rescue him in the first place?"

"No. I wanted us to rescue him for the same reasons he helped those people - because he could. Because we could."

I folded up the news articles again and gave them back to Xavier. "Do you think Cameron Hodge would have done what Warren did," Xavier asked me as he took them, "if it meant potential exposure? Or if there was nothing in it for him?"

That was easy. "No." But this new revelation about Warren left me more confused than ever. It did sound like the Warren I'd come to know - and to like. But the fact he was attracted to me still bugged the hell out of me. "I'm not . . . like that," I said finally, because I didn't know how else to explain. "I don't like guys. I don't like _any_body. I just - " I stopped and took a breath. "That part of me is dead, professor. I don't think I can feel that way. I don't even _want_ to." I hadn't masturbated in well over a year and the only way I had an orgasm anymore was unwittingly, in my sleep. I wished I were a store mannequin, smooth and featureless down there. No ugly, funny, demanding penis; no hormones; no sex drive. Just blank.

The professor's eyes were sad. "I'm certainly not suggesting that you should feel for Warren what he feels for you, Scott. But wounds do heal, and I hope a day comes when you find that part of you is not dead. Yet even if you were 'like that,' you wouldn't be ready for a relationship right now. Unfortunately, Warren has no way of knowing that - much less of knowing why."

I blinked at him dumbly for a moment before my brain caught up with what he was suggesting. "You think I should tell him what I was? _No fucking way!_"

He waved a hand. "Whether you tell him all of it is up to you. But Warren deserves to know something. You could tell him that you're simply not ready for a relationship of any kind, with anyone. He respects you, and likes you as a person. He said to me before I left that all he wants is your friendship. I don't believe he actually expected anything else, Scott, even if he might have hoped for it." He paused, then asked, "Will you talk to him?"

I thought about it. "He's going to stay at the school?"

"I'm not going to ask him to leave, no."

I sighed. "Then I guess I'll have to." It wasn't like I had anywhere else to go myself.

* * *

><p>Warren was nowhere to be seen when we got back. Maybe Xavier had sent him off somewhere on purpose, or maybe he'd just disappeared on his own. In any case, and grateful for the reprieve, I retreated to my room to change, donning the blue pullover Mariana had given me. Comfort clothes. Then I wandered down to the kitchen to ransack the fridge. Hank had fed me at the hospital, but that had been hours ago - late afternoon - and I was hungry again. The cook was gone for the night. Xavier entered as I was eating at the little kitchen table, motoring over to join me. He didn't say anything, just looked at me. "What?" I asked, though I knew perfectly well what he wanted.<p>

"Warren?"

Sighing, I put down the sandwich. "I don't know where he is. I haven't seen him." Of course, I also hadn't looked.

Xavier's smile was wry and patient; the one he gave me when he still found me amusing, but was about to stop finding me so. "He's on the roof," he told me.

"Oh. Gee, thanks."

"You're welcome."

"Can I finish my sandwich?"

"Of course." And he motored out again. Sighing, I glanced down at the bread - good healthy wheat at Hank's insistence - but didn't pick it back up. I wasn't hungry now. Tension had lodged in my gut like dead dough, all the yeast killed, but the idea of simply throwing away food still bothered me. Taking it out back, I gave the ham to the cats and left the bread for the birds. Then I took off upstairs to grab a jacket and find Warren. No damn sense in putting it off.

Hank had showed me a path onto the roof that even I could manage, out through an attic window that was near enough one of the pitched gables to scramble up and sit on the peak. Warren, of course, wasn't restricted by bipedal limitations. I didn't spot him immediately, then saw him perched on the cross gables dead at the middle of the mansion roof, like a shadow of some great, granite gargoyle. The night wind fluttered his wings. He'd stretched them out, maybe for balance, maybe just to relax the muscles. He must have seen me trying to scramble over the slate shingles towards him because he rose up in the air like Gabriel at the Annunciation, flying to where I was and landing as gracefully as he'd risen. "Sit down before you fall, idiot." And he helped me back to a secure perch on the gable near the attic window, then settled beside me, wings still half extended. They fanned me, lifting my hair lightly. My stomach spun and dipped, and I wasn't sure if that was for his proximity, or the altitude. In any case, we sat together in silence for a while; I couldn't meet his eyes. Somewhere far off, I could hear a truck honk. Now that I was up here, I had no idea what to say, and he didn't, either. Despite how unseasonably warm the day had been, it was cold at night, and I wrapped my jacket more tightly around myself, pulling my cigarettes out of a pocket to light one.

"Care to share?" he asked, and I extended him the pack so he could take one, then handed over my lighter. He's a chipper, not a serious smoker, and never bought his own, just bummed them off me, complaining about the fact I smoked Camels when I could have imported French Gitanes. I told him if he wanted imports, he could buy them himself.

When his cigarette was lit, he said, "What, exactly, did Cameron say to you?"

I wondered how much the professor had told him. "How do you know that he said anything?"

"Because I know that bitch. I wasn't thinking, or I wouldn't have stuck you with him." His smile was self-derogatory. "Bad Worthington."

Shaking my head, I rolled the end of my cigarette carefully on slate to make a cone of ash. Very precise. "What did the professor tell you?"

"Nothing, Scott. Or nothing about what happened. He said I should talk to you, but I didn't think you wanted to talk, so I came up here."

I nodded, answering honestly, "I don't want to talk. But I guess we need to, if we're going to be living under the same roof."

Though his face stayed cool, his wings had started to flutter. I understood now they were shaking in the same way a person's hand might, when nervous or afraid. I focused on the shaking wings, not his serene face. "Do you really like boys with blue eyes?"

Dead silence for three beats, then, "I like blue eyes period, on boys or girls. I like pistachio ice cream, too, but I'll eat anything you give me as long as it's ice cream. It's not the flavor. It's the ice cream."

"So you're what? _Omni-_sexual? You'll take anything for a lay?"

He burst out laughing and swore vividly at the same time, then wiped his face with the hand holding the cigarette. The dim red glow reflected in wet tracks running down his face. Good God. He was crying. "I meant I'd like you no matter what color your eyes are. It's the _you_ I like, not your eyes. Though I admit, they're pretty spectacular eyes."

"Oh." The tears moved me as thoroughly as the shaking wings. Looking down at the slate between my thighs, I finished my cigarette and thought hard. Maybe the best thing was just to be honest and frank. I flicked the butt away like my inhibitions. "Warren, look, I don't - "

"You don't have to say anything. I know you're not."

"Shut the fuck up and let me finish." I glared at him, but he stayed quiet. The wings were really shaking now. "And no, I'm not." I looked off across the dark shadow of forest. "But even if I were, the answer would still be 'no.' I don't want a relationship with anyone. It doesn't have to do with you, or whether you like cunt or dick or both." I don't know why I had to make it sound so crass, but I wanted it ugly. I could see his wings flinch. "I'm just not interested in that, and I wouldn't be even if you were a Gabrielle instead of a Gabriel."

A long, long silence. Finally, he said, "So it doesn't bother you?"

"Not like you mean." I half turned back, but kept my eyes lowered. "It's nothing religious or anything. I'm pretty much a lapsed Catholic. If you have a boyfriend instead of a girlfriend, it's cool - as long as it's not me."

He pondered that a while. I still didn't look at him. The cold was really starting to get to me and I'd begun shaking as well, a bone-deep tremor. I could hear my own teeth chatter. Abruptly his wings raised and arched forward, cocooning me in white without actually touching. It was surprisingly warm, and startled, I glanced up at him. His face was still, but not with the fragile, hold-onto-dignity stiffness that it had been earlier. He seemed . . . sad. "Thanks," I said, tipping my head sideways to indicate the wing windbreaker.

"Any time."

More silence. The wings insulated against more than the wind. They dimmed sound, made the night safe, and I couldn't resist. I had to ask. "Do you always give wing feathers to people you want to sleep with?"

"No. Never. I only give them to friends."

"But Cameron said - "

"Cameron used to be my friend, Scott. Then he was my lover. Now, he hates my guts."

"Why?"

He shrugged, and the wings shrugged with his shoulders. "His father worked for mine. He couldn't own me. I had wings and he didn't. I have money and he doesn't, or not as much. None of the above. All of the above. I don't know. I'm not sure people like Cam need a reason, or they have so many reasons, none of them count. I should've thought of it, when I asked him to keep you company, but I just honest-to-God didn't figure he'd try anything. Or that you'd take anything he said seriously."

"Why wouldn't I? He didn't lie. I can tell a lie. Most of the time."

"Oh, Cam doesn't lie. He's too good at twisting the truth. But I thought you knew me better."

"Warren, I've known you all of a week."

He cocked his head to regard me, sharply, like a bird of prey, and in that moment, he didn't look quite human. "You know me better after one week than most people know me after ten years. I tell you things I just don't tell."

Astonished, I could only manage, "Why?"

"Because I trust you."

"Do you always make stupid-ass knee-jerk decisions like that?"

"Not always."

"I could rob you blind and you'd never catch me doing it."

"Probably. But you wouldn't. I could leave my wallet on top of my dresser and you'd walk right past because it's not yours. You're honest to a fault, and you're proud. I can trust that."

Oh, I was proud all right. Proud as a whore. He had no idea what I'd do to survive. Steal, con, sell my body . . . I didn't have a shred of dignity that I could lay genuine claim to. The only reason I wouldn't steal from him now was because I didn't need to. "You have some really funny ideas about me, Warren."

That won an unexpected grin. "I may have a few funny ideas, but I think the rest of them are pretty on-target. If I've learned nothing else about you in the last week, Summers, I've learned that you don't give yourself half enough credit."

Instead of pleasing me, that just annoyed me. "What would you know," I snarled back, "about the credit I give myself? You know _nothing_ about me."

Instantly, the wings flicked away and the sudden return of night wind was chilling - his expression equally so. "Sometimes I don't get you. And the really sad thing is - I think you want it that way." We just glared at each other. "I may have told you things I don't tell, but you're right - I know hardly anything about you. You hide it, don't trust anyone, just take and take. You're a damn clam. It's _selfish. _Friendship has to go both ways, Scott."

Now, my shaking was from rage, not cold. "You have no right to judge me! You've had everything handed to you on a silver platter."

"Oh, sure. Like being rich makes life okay."

"Would you give it up?"

He threw up his hands. "Some days - yes! If it meant I could be normal. If it meant I didn't have to hide these damn things." The wings arched and beat for emphasis. "If I could have friends, a lover, a family. Sure. I'd be the son of a goddamn welder if it meant I had a father who gave a shit. I'd be anything at all _if it just freakin' meant people didn't hate me!_"

The tears were back, but his wings were out and beating hard, half lifting him off his feet. He really did look like an avenging angel, and I knew, instinctively, that he was leveling with me. It was too plebeian and uncreative to be a lie.

But I turned my head down. "I don't know how." I wanted to level with him in return, even as I didn't want to. Sitting on the roof gable with Warren beating the air right in front of me, scared by the sheer possibility of trust, I pulled up my knees and wrapped my arms around them, burying my face against them. _"I don't know how!_" I screamed. "_I don't know how to be your friend!_"

He settled back down and the wings stopped. He just held them out as he had before, for balance - maybe emotional as much as literal. He talked with them as much as he talked with words. "Try," was all he said, then knelt down in front of me. "_Try." _

I raised my face. "It's hard. To trust. It's so damn hard." And that bared me even more than if I'd stripped naked for him. I'd been naked plenty.

"I don't want to hurt you," he said.

"You want to _fuck_ me," I replied.

He shook his head. "No. I might want to make love to you, if you were interested. But you're not." He shrugged, shoulder and wing. "Fine. I don't know why it scares you. And I can see that it does." He reached out to touch my hair, too fast for me to anticipate and control my reaction. I flinched. "Just like that scares you. I thought maybe it was a religious thing since you're Catholic - but you said it's not, and I believe that. People recoil in disgust. They don't flinch like they think you're going to hit them." I could see the pieces snapping together in his head - like one of my damn puzzles - even as he was speaking. "Can you tell me what happened to you? So I can understand. I won't touch you, Scott. I won't ever touch you without your permission, unless it's an emergency or something. But please, tell me what happened. Why are you so scared to be touched?"

I didn't even realize I was crying until I tasted the salt in my mouth. It was like my first day at the mansion when the professor had confided to me how to hide from him. This, I thought, was the measure of friendship. Giving up what one wanted for what the other needed. A desire to feel with, _be_ with, move the gut - not just with pity, but with solidarity in pain. Compassion with skin on. Who had taught him to do that?

More, if he could reach beyond betrayals - could I?

_How silently, how silently, the wondrous gift is given; so God imparts to human hearts the blessings of his heaven . . . We hear the Christmas angels the great glad tidings tell; O come to us, abide with us, our Lord Emmanuel. _

A real, live angel. And it had nothing to do with the wings.

So I trusted. I leapt off the roof of my fears, telling him the one thing for which I most expected to be rejected, and most needed to have accepted.

"I was a hustler. Before I came here. I was a hustler on the street."

He didn't reply immediately. I think shock had stolen his voice. He'd probably had suspicions of child abuse, incest, sexual assault, violent rape . . . but not the bold, bald, nasty fact that I'd made a living sucking cock and taking it up the ass. Nothing tragic about that - no socially-titillating exposé. I was just your common, garden-variety catamite. In the face of that, he was silent. And into the silence, my nervous words tumbled out like a prayer, disjointed in desperation.

"I ran away, from Boy's Town in Omaha. I hopped a bus to New York. My parents died when I was eight. Plane crash. My brother and I survived. He got adopted. I didn't. I was in a coma for a while. They put me in five foster homes after that."

I stopped and just shook for a minute. "Some were okay." I stopped again. The wings had come back around me, white feathers hiding me, shielding me. "Some weren't. I stabbed a guy. I had to. I had to stab him. He kept . . . bothering her. He kept touching her. He shouldn't have touched her like that. She was only six. So I stabbed him. They told me he lived. But then they put me in Boy's Town. I was a troublemaker. Nobody wants a troublemaker.

"Boy's Town is mostly an okay place. But one of the boys in our house - he used to cut me. All five of us. He made us bleed, and promised to kill us if we told. It was stupid, but I believed him. So I didn't tell. I ran away, instead - took a bus to New York. I played pool pretty well, but when you're little, it's not a good idea to run cons. You need muscle to con. I was fast instead. Sometimes I was fast enough to get away; sometimes I got caught." I stopped again and rubbed my nose, forgetting for a minute it was mucus, not blood. I stared at my hand, surprised to find it wasn't red. "Jack caught me one night. Told me he'd let me live if I worked for him. So I worked for him." I wiped off the dampness.

"How - " He choked. "How long?"

"A year and a half, or really, a year and four months." One year, four months and thirteen days. "I had a john who knew about Xavier and he sent me here. The professor thinks I'm a mutant." I wiped my face again. "Funny mutant with no special powers."

"Scott. Look at me." I obeyed. He had one hand held out. "I said I wouldn't touch you without your permission." He didn't move the hand, just held it there. "_I triumphed and I saddened with all weather / Heaven and I wept together / And its sweet tears were salt with mortal mine / Against the red throb of its sunset-heart / I laid my own to beat / And share commingling heat . . . And now my heart is as a broken fount / Wherein tear-drippings stagnate, spilt down ever / From the dank thoughts that shiver / Upon the sighful branches of my mind / Such is, what is to be? / The pulp so bitter, how shall taste the rind? . . . Now of that long pursuit / Comes on at hand the bruit / That Voice is round me like a bursting sea . . . 'All which thy child's mistake / Fancies as lost, I have stored for thee at home / Rise, clasp My hand, and come !'_"

"God," I muttered, "You're as bad as Hank."

But slowly, I put my hand in his and our fingers clasped tightly. He smiled at me, a human man with angel wings. A star in December. A stable in Bethlehem.

* * *

><p><strong>Notes:<strong> It's so easy to make Warren simplistic in fanfic, but like Scott, he's complex and easily misunderstood. And like Scott, he _does_ have a deep-seated sense of right and wrong. Warren was the Avenging Angel before he was an X-Man. I owe Lelia for some insights into Warren. Cameron Hodge should be familiar to readers of _X-Factor_. The lyrics are from "The First Noel," and "O Little Town of Bethlehem." The poem Warren quotes is "The Hound of Heaven" by Francis Thompson, though yes, I know, I took the words out of context.


	7. Primary Colors

When you first meet the woman who'll turn out to be the great love of your life, you'd think there'd be some warning, some fanfare, or at least a nipping intuition.

Nope. _Nada._ Not even a hint.

In fact, I can't now recall what Jean was wearing when I first saw her, or anything specific about her beyond the fact that she was attractive in a sophisticated fashion, and her arms were full of presents wrapped in chic paper of blue and gold, ivory and wine, and topped with velvet bows. The presents grabbed my attention mainly because it looked as if she were about to drop them all.

Warren and I had come barreling out of the billiards room when some stranger had bellowed "Merry Christmas!" at the top of her lungs in the foyer. Burglars don't usually announce their presence - at least not like a branded calf - but the mansion wasn't a place that people wandered into casually, either. So we'd raced out to find her standing there with her arms full and the door hanging open behind her, letting in freezing air. I had a pretty good idea who she was, even without Hank sliding down the stairwell banister with a shout of "Jeannie!"

The oft mentioned but heretofore elusive Jean Grey had appeared at last.

Hank took some of her presents as Warren walked over to shut the door. That was when she noticed the two of us, or really, noticed Warren, and paused to blink in nonplused surprise, her mouth hanging open a bit stupidly. I got nothing more than a cursory glance before her gaze swiveled back to him, taking in both his wings and his face, but fixating on his face.

"Hi," she said. "You must be Warren." Then, as if remembering, she turned to me and grinned. "And you're Scott, right?"

So she'd heard about us just as we'd heard about her.

Hank cheerfully inserted himself among us to make introductions. "Jean, this is Scott Summers. He joined us in September. And this is Warren Worthington III, who joined just this last month. Fellows, this is the lovely, talented, and ebullient Jean Grey."

Laughing, Jean shifted presents to smack his arm - not hard - then ask, "Where's Charles?"

It surprised me to hear her call the professor by his given name so casually, but Hank just pointed back up the stairs. "Last I saw, he was working in his office. I'm sure he knows you're here by now, though."

And as if on cue, the hall elevator dinged and the door slid aside. This was the public lift, not the hidden one going to the sub-basement. A grinning Xavier wheeled out, his arms extended, and Jean put down her presents to hurry over and embrace him warmly. "I'm so glad to have you back, my dear," he said. "I've missed you."

And at that, I just saw green.

I didn't have a name then to hang on the sudden, dark shift of my thoughts - I wasn't good at naming feelings - but I was the Elder Son watching the return of the favored Prodigal. And I was bitterly jealous.

So no, I didn't fall in love with Jean Grey at first sight. Quite the opposite, actually. She was the interloper, the threat to my place in the household. What I didn't stop to consider was how I'd shifted so quickly from thinking of myself as a tolerated counterfeit to a child who had a place for which he could be challenged.

Crossing my arms, I tried to affect a jaded disinterest. Of course, hiding anything from a telepath is just this side of ludicrous, but at the time, I didn't realize Jean was as much a telepath as Xavier.

She'd arrived more or less in time for supper, so the professor herded all of us from the foyer into the dining hall, and Warren and Hank warred over the right to pull out a chair for her at the long table. Arms crossed on the back of my own chair, I just watched. The little bitch, she had the rest of them eating right out of her hand.

Smiling faintly at the other two, and eyeing me, she said, "That's really not necessary, boys." And she made a commanding gesture with one hand.

My own chair jerked out from under me and slid around to her side of the table. "Holy _fuck_!" I yelled. "What the hell?"

Jean sat down in it and rested her elbows on the table. "Just thought I'd save you the trouble." She grinned like an imp. At me. Then she winked. Inside my skull, she said, _The 'little bitch' can get her own chair. It's the '90s. And I'm not your rival, Scott. _

Involuntarily, I laughed, though Hank and Warren had no idea what I found so funny. Bitch, yes. Minx, too. And not afraid to call me on my assumptions.

"Jean," Xavier was saying, "is a telekinetic, as well as a telepath, like myself."

"Not as strong, though," Jean added. "I can't read random thoughts unless they're . . . obvious."

She hadn't released my gaze.

We sat down to eat, and after the meal, Jean distributed her presents. Rather to my surprise, she had something for us all, even Warren and me. Mine was a puzzle, 5000 pieces showing an image of jumbled, multi-hued Ukranian Easter eggs. It wasn't expensive enough - lightweight cardboard Hasbro - to make me feel badly at having nothing for her in return, but it was far more specific than food or clothing, either of which might have cost more, yet been less thoughtful.

Warren's present was even more intriguing. What does one get for the man who can afford everything? A set of bottled ointments, apparently handmade and labeled with black magic-marker. "What is this stuff?" he asked, holding up one to peer at the writing.

"Healthy skin and feather care for the winged mutant in winter." She grinned. "Your body may secrete natural oils, but it won't hurt to supplement them." She pointed to bottles. "The one you're holding is cod-liver oil. Don't make a face! You need it. Prime vitamin A supplement. Given your body weight, I'd say - what do you think, Hank? - 6 ounces a day in winter?"

I was struggling not to laugh at the expression on Warren's face. I got a puzzle; he got cod-liver oil.

"The other capped bottles," she was saying, "are flax seed and evening primrose oils. Both you can apply directly to any irritated spots on the wings. But once a day, regardless, you should apply the mist - that's what's in the three spray bottles. It's evening primrose, elder, chamomile, calendula and sesame oil."

And so it went. Jean had specific, if inexpensive, presents for us all, and she seemed to take great delight in seeing our reactions. It said, I thought, a great deal about her, yet my cynical side was still suspicious. Simple kindness didn't strike me as motivation enough, so I studied her. She was tall, with large bones and a strong jaw, and lanky auburn hair that framed a pale but attractive face otherwise undistinguished except for the eyes. Those were dark and intelligent, with fine brows that arched high - all but hidden behind large-lens glasses. Someone needed to take her shopping for contacts. She was the kind of girl who, if dressed right, might be a knockout, but if dressed wrong - as now - looked merely big and awkward and a little too flushed from the wine she'd had with dinner.

After the meal, Xavier suggested that Jean go settle herself in, and then invited me to stay for our usual hour or two at puzzles. I hadn't expected that. I'd expected Jean to have his entire attention, but I'm sure he read my jealousy as clearly as she had, and was trying to reassure me. So I stayed and she departed with Hank (and Warren) to settle in. The professor suggested we start my new puzzle although there was one still incomplete on his table. The point was subtle, but I took his meaning all the same. We said almost nothing while we set out the puzzle pieces, a few stray comments on the meal, the weather, and the New Year's Gala to which he'd been invited and was taking me the evening after next. I even had a nice new suit. Cut my hair, clean me up, and take out the earrings, and one couldn't tell what I'd been less than a year ago.

"Do I really have to go?" I asked the professor now.

"Of course not, Scott." He set aside the puzzle box and began the task of separating out the edge pieces. "I simply hate to leave you home all by yourself on New Year's Eve."

I sighed. Truth was, I didn't want to be left home, either, but I'd never been to a fancy party where I wasn't the entertainment. Turning to look at me, Xavier laid a hand gently on mine. I flinched, but I didn't pull away. "You won't be there alone. Hank may be on call, but Warren will be there, and Jean, as well. I wouldn't abandon you to your own devices."

I wasn't entirely reassured. My friendship with Warren remained a bit frayed at the edges, and I knew Jean not at all, but I said, "Okay."

* * *

><p>"War?"<p>

He turned at the sound of my voice. The lines of his evening jacket lay perfectly, even with the wing rack beneath, but when one plunked down a couple thousand pounds for a hand-made suit from Benson and Clegg on Piccadilly in London, that was what one expected. He was straightening his cuffs - white against the dark fabric of the jacket - and he smiled. "What's up?

Feeling supremely stupid, I held up my necktie. I'd never learned to tie one. In fact, I hadn't worn a suit like this in my life. It felt restricting but . . . respectable. And I liked that.

Without comment, he came over to slip the tie out of my hands, a slick draw of silk across my palm. The tie was deep maroon to offset the charcoal black of the suit fabric. I could walk down Wall Street in this and not draw a second glance, which was quite a step up from the glances I'd drawn in Alphabet City in the Village.

"Raise your chin," he said, deftly turning up my collar to slip the tie around it. "I confess, I've never understood the rationale behind hanging our own noose around our necks, but what can I say? It's the fashion. It's not too hard to do, either. The trick is getting both pieces roughly the same length. I'll show you later, but it amounts to a slip knot." He spoke as he worked, either to distract me from the necessity of his touch, however impersonal, or to make me feel less foolish, or both. Finished, he turned back down the collar and patted me lightly on the chest, right over the tie.

I grinned; I couldn't help it. "Do I look okay?"

"You look _fantastic_."

Uttered in another tone, or with a less open smile, it would've been a come-on, but Warren had always shown a remarkable ability to be wholly straightforward. He meant exactly what he said; no more, no less. He could play games of innuendo, but preferred to avoid them. It was why I'd felt so drawn to him from the outset. As astonishing as it seemed to me, Xavier had been right. Warren liked me for me - plain and simple. This was, I thought, the way it ought to be, this was what 'normal' felt like, and he'd always have my loyalty for teaching me friendship. I'd force myself past my own discomfort, because Warren had earned it.

"Let's go find the lady," he said now, double-checking his own tie in the mirror.

Following him out, I asked, "What do you think of her?"

"Who? Jean?"

"No, the fucking housecat! Come on, who'd you think I meant?"

His smile and sideways glance were sly. "I think Jean is very nice. And I think you're jealous."

"I am not."

"Yes, you are."

"I am not, dammit! It's just . . . she waltzes in here after being off at school for months, and takes over the whole fucking place! Little Miss Perfect."

"Nope. You're not jealous in the least."

"Blow it out your asshole."

He laughed, then sobered. "She's not perfect, Scott - not any more than I am. She just wants people to like her, so she does her best to be what she isn't. I understand that."

I pondered his words as we arrived downstairs in the foyer where the professor and Jean were already waiting. For once, a woman had beaten the men ready, and I'd been correct in my earlier evaluation. Dress her right and she was a statuesque knockout, but that assessment was entirely clinical. At a visceral level, I remained unmoved. Warren, however, was susceptible to a spangly evening gown and artfully applied makeup. He swung either way.

"Miss Grey," he said, offering her an arm.

"Mr. Worthington," she replied with a smile, and took it.

I rolled my eyes where neither could see_. Tsk, tsk,_ the professor said into my head.

We took two cars to the party. Warren wanted to drive himself, and Jean opted to ride with him. I rode with Xavier in the Rolls. The very idea that I was sitting in a vehicle like this, chauffeured to a fancy party dressed in a suit by Armani, still blew my mind. "I feel like Cinderella," I muttered.

Xavier smiled from the seat beside mine. "I trust our transportation won't revert to a pumpkin at midnight, or we shall have a long, cold trip back home." Then he added, "You look very nice, you know." Embarrassed but pleased, I shrugged.

When we arrived at the mansion where the party was underway, I discovered that if clothes didn't quite make the man, they had a moderate shot at re-making him. However much I might have felt like an impostor, no one else reacted to me as such. It was the most bizarre experience of my life to date - far stranger than saving angels from rooftops or living in a household where one resident crossed rooms on the ceiling, another could move the furniture without touching it, a third molted on the carpet, and the master of it all could call us to dinner without uttering a word.

"It's a pleasure to have you, Mr. Summers." "What a handsome and polite young man." "So glad Charles brought such nice young people."

No one asked, "Who let in the whore?" Astonishing. I was Eliza Doolittle with a penis.

So I wandered about, either with the others or by myself, sometimes pausing to glance in reflective surfaces to see if my mask were slipping yet. But all I saw looking back at me was a well-dressed teenaged boy on the cusp of manhood. "Seem what you would be," I muttered to myself, "and be what you would seem."

This was _me_. This was Scott Summers. I _wasn't_ a whore. I wasn't a charity case. I was a sixteen-year-old in a suit with a plate full of _hors d'oeuvres_. I was a student, a friend. I was the eldest son of an air force pilot, an orphan, yes, but not alone. I had a future, if I wanted it.

I could redefine myself. That, I decided, was my New Year's resolution. I would make myself into someone new.

I found I was grinning.

"Hey." The greeting startled me, and the hand on my shoulder startled me even more, but I controlled my flinch and turned to find Jean Grey. "Admiring your reflection, Narcissus? You do look pretty sharp tonight, I admit."

It was said with humor, not venom, and here, now, I couldn't summon the animosity to resent her. "No, actually, I was thinking about something else. Just - you know - staring off into space."

She grinned, her hand still on my shoulder, and I didn't move away. "Yeah, I do that, too. Usually when I'm bored to tears. That's what I came to ask, in fact - you wanna get out of here?"

I blinked. "The professor's ready to leave?" It was barely ten-thirty in the evening.

"No, no, I meant just us. You, me, Warren."

Confused, I asked, "Why?"

"Well, um . . . Charles means well, but, um, this is the blue-hair convention."

Taken by surprise, I glanced around. The entire setting was so far beyond anything I was used to, the elderly composition of the guest-list honestly hadn't registered with me. "I don't mind," I said. And I didn't. They'd accepted me, and I'd enjoyed visiting with some of them.

But Jean rolled her eyes and slipped an arm through mine, tugging me away with a familiarity that only Mariana had ever earned before. "I swear, you're sixteen going on forty, Scott. Let's go do something more _fun_."

"And leave the professor?" The idea of abandoning him bothered me deeply.

She glanced over. "Who do you think suggested we take you along? We weren't sure you wanted to go, but Charles said we should ask you."

In truth, this felt more like an abduction than an inquiry, but I went along with it. "Okay, I guess. Let me tell him goodbye, at least."

"Go ahead; he was in the drawing room, last I saw. Warren and I will meet you at the Porsche."

So I wound through the crowd seeking the drawing room without any idea of what I was looking for. What did a drawing room look like? I finally broke down and asked someone, and was steered in the right direction. I found the professor just as Jean had said, having brandy and a pipe by the fireplace with several other men his own age. "Scott," he said, upon seeing me. "Did Jean find you?"

"Yes, sir." Being in this place sharpened my manners from the 'yeah' I might have given under other circumstances. "But I wanted to see you first."

Sensing my uncertainty, he smiled and made a shooing motion. "You aren't required to stay here. Go have fun with Jean and Warren."

"Kids getting bored?" one of the other men asked. He had a shock of white hair and a long face, and reminded me - just vaguely - of the man in the silver jaguar who'd first sent me to Xavier.

"A little," Xavier replied with a smile, then glanced back at me. "Go on, Scott. Have a good time." In my head, he said, _Keep an eye on them. _I nodded.

So I went out of that fancy mansion on New Year's Eve a different person than I'd gone in, and with a new responsibility. 'Keep an eye on them.' At the time, the irony didn't occur to me that I, the youngest, had been placed in the role of guardian. It simply fit, as snug as my suit jacket.

Outside, I paused to light a cigarette. I hadn't wanted to smoke in someone's nice house, but I needed the nicotine to calm me and was finishing it as I reached Warren's gold Boxster. I noted Jean's wrinkled nose, and dropped the butt on asphalt, crushing it out before wedging myself somehow into the nonexistant backseat. "So where are we going?" I asked.

"Anywhere but here," Jean said from her place at shotgun as Warren slipped behind the wheel. I eyed him, to judge his sobriety, but he seemed all right.

"Actually," he said, starting the engine, "I want to go somewhere I've never been, do something I've never done."

"What? Visit Wal-Mart?"

Warren laughed at that. "Believe it or not, I've been to Wal-Mart. And an A&P, too." He turned in the seat to look at me. "You know how to bowl?"

"Well . . . yeah," I replied cautiously. "You don't?"

"Nope."

I shook my head. The mental image of Warren in rented bowling shoes and a hand-made British suit was ludicrous. But I liked it. "Jean - you know any bowling alleys in Westchester?"

She scrunched up her nose in thought, like a pensive rabbit. "New Roc City in New Rochelle? It's not just a bowling alley, it's sort of an indoor boardwalk. They even have ice-skating."

"Perfect," Warren said, and threw the car in gear.

And it was perfect. Plebian entertainment with upper class pretensions and strung white lights above a brick street, cotton-candy-colored neon billboards, and wall-to-wall people. We stood out in our nice evening clothes, but not too much. There were Goths and Geeks, Grunge and Preps, and everything in between. Jean hooked her arms through Warren's and mine, and dragged us past arcades and restaurants and shops, directly to the neon-blacklit bowling alley. "Here it is."

Warren was still looking back up the sidewalk. "Was that laser tag? I want to go play laser tag."

"We can visit the fun house later," Jean said, and pushed the door open, hauling him inside.

So under purple neon, I taught Warren to bowl, as he'd once taught me to golf - taught them both to bowl, really. It took us a while to find a ball with holes small enough for Jean's slender fingers. She had to doff her heels to put on the shoes, and that made her sequined dress drag the floor, and Warren looked very silly in a dark suit and two-toned bowling shoes. So did I, for that matter.

It didn't matter. We had fun. Most of Warren's balls went down the gutter, and too many of Jean's went backwards, flung off her fingers in the wrong direction by the weight. After a while, we started calling "Fore!" when she'd step up to take her turn. She made faces at us. I beat them both - twice - even though they played as a team against me. We ate generic, greasy pizza and toasted the new year with coke. Jean gave us both a kiss - on the cheek only, but I was charmed. Later, we went down to the arcade to play laser tag, which was laughable in suits and Jean's evening dress. We wound up tangled on the floor at one point like puppies, laughing so hard we couldn't even sit up.

It was the first time in a very long time that I could remember enjoying myself so purely, and all without chemical assistance. By the time we left, it was three in the morning, and Jean had an arm around both of our waists . . . and it was okay. I didn't mind. That was the birth of the Three Mutant Musketeers, as Jean dubbed us. I protested that I wasn't a mutant, but she just looked at me with half-lidded amusement. "You knock Cerebro off the scale, Scott, and I've seen the DNA tests Henry ran on you. You're a mutant."

"So why haven't I manifested any 'talent' then?"

"I don't know; maybe you have and we just haven't figured out what it is yet."

"Maybe he's going to be latent," Warren said.

"Maybe," Jean agreed. "But I doubt it. We don't blow Cerebro's gasket, War. I've never seen anyone except Charles himself affect Cerebro's readouts like Scott does."

I didn't reply, but her words troubled me deeply, in part because the professor had never told me this. Once, I would've attributed sinister motives to that concealment, but I'd learned since to trust - at least to a point - and was willing to grant Xavier the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he'd just been afraid to alarm me.

And what did it mean, what she'd said? That I sent Cerebro off the scale? What did that make me?

Dangerous, maybe. It put a damper on my frivolous mood. To make matters worse, we were caught in traffic on the way home, even at that early-morning hour, due to a pile-up on the highway involving a semi and at least three cars. Both lanes were blocked for almost half an hour as they brought in helicopters and emergency vehicles. Eventually, we were able to move forward and get past the site of the accident, marked off by pink flares in the dark. A morbid curiosity made us stare as we crawled solemnly by. One car lay upside down and another had the roof peeled back like the top of a sardine tin. I wondered what the people in those cars had been doing just before the impact. Had they been laughing like we had earlier? Had they been happy? Had they made New Year's resolutions that would go unfulfilled now?

Death and life were a mystery. One year dies and a new one is born. An old life crumbles and a new one rises. I leaned back against the rear seat and thought about my own promises to myself, my resolutions, and the games I'd been playing about the state of my own health. 'Don't ask, don't tell.' Was it futile to remake yourself when you carried the seeds of your own destruction in your blood? I'd never escape my old life, not entirely, and I probably wouldn't see thirty.

But I wanted to live. _"I want more life. I can't help myself, I do." _The words from that play, _Angels in America_, spun around inside my skull. Could I make whatever time I had left be enough? Could I have enough life? And I was suddenly fed up with my own attempts to avoid what I already knew. Wasn't part of living facing the truth?

When we returned, the professor was up waiting, worried, but he could see that we were all as sober as priests. "There was a big accident," Warren said, face tired as he jiggled his keys. "The cops shut down the highway for a while, to bring in the medical choppers. I know - we should have called. Sorry. We just didn't think about it."

Xavier nodded, accepting that, though he clearly wasn't happy with us. "You're safe. That's what matters. Go to bed, children." So we did, but the sun was rising on a new year by the time I laid my head on my pillow.

When I rose, it was already after noon. I showered, dressed, then hung up the suit I'd left spread across a chair the night before. The jacket smelled faintly still of body odor, cigarettes and cotton candy, greasy pizza and Jean's perfume. Dry cleaning was in order, but part of me regretted the need. These were the scents of my own awakening. I wasn't numb anymore.

Shutting the closet door, I went down to find the professor, or better yet, Hank. I figured that he'd be back from the hospital by now, and he was. I located him in the kitchen, eating a bowl of cereal and looking exhausted. No one else was in the room. Getting coffee, I seated myself across from him at the eat-in table. "Good morning," he said, but his heart wasn't in it.

"You look dead beat."

"I am. We had four trauma calls last night, one right after the other, the worst at the end. Decapitation. Seven teenagers in one car. Apparently, it spun out of control, crossed the median, and went under a semi trailer - peeling the top right off, and six heads with it. The only one to survive was a girl who'd been lying down across laps in the backseat."

"We saw it."

His head jerked up. "What?"

"Not the accident, but the cars - yeah. On the way back from New Rochelle last night. The accident had traffic backed up for miles. By the time we got up there, the ambulances were all gone, but the cars weren't. There were at least two others, plus the truck."

He nodded. "The chief car struck another, and yet a third car slammed into the back of the semi when the driver put on the brakes suddenly. There were two other fatalities, and several serious injuries. The truck driver walked away." He shook his head. "I was never made to deal with this sort of thing, Scott. Give me a problem to solve, but don't give me a body to patch up that is past repair."

His big hands were shaking, and seeing the normally irrepressible Hank so distraught moved me. Reaching out spontaneously, I offered him my own hand to grip. He did so, studying my face in surprise. "Thank you."

"You're welcome." And given his evening, I was reluctant to ask him my next question, although it was why I'd come looking for him in the first place. It was time to stop avoiding the issue. "Hank, I need to know - am I HIV positive?"

Sitting back, he released my hand and his face went still. "What brought this up?"

"I'm tired of playing ostrich."

His eyes held mine for a full minute, then he nodded. "Yes, you are."

It was a dull blow, one I'd been prepared for, but a blow nonetheless. Until a fact is confirmed, there's always a fraction of doubt. Of hope.

"But," Hank went on, "you're showing no signs of developing AIDS, or even ARC. You may never develop it. We still don't entirely understand the virus, Scott."

I nodded. I knew all that. "Can you give me anything preventive for it?"

"I already have been. What do you think those drug cocktails are that I feed you periodically?"

And I nodded again. I suppose I'd suspected that as well, but I simply hadn't asked questions. "I need to know something else. Jean told me you've done a DNA scan on me." He eyed me, then nodded. "And she says I have the X-gene."

"You do."

"So why hasn't it manifested? Don't most mutants manifest by my age?"

"Many do, yes. But it's all very new. There's a lot that we don't fully understand yet."

"But I am a mutant."

"Genetically speaking, you are a mutant."

Standing, I pushed in my chair. "Thank you." And after pouring fresh coffee, I headed out.

"Scott - " Hank called behind me. I glanced back. "That is all you wanted to know?"

"Yeah, that's all. Go get some sleep, Monkey Toes. And thanks."

My next objective was Xavier himself, but before I found him, I stumbled over Jean and Warren in the den, watching football. "Hey - the dead walk," Warren said without turning to look at me, but he was grinning.

I didn't reply, but did decide that Xavier could wait, and entered to join them. Jean scooted over, making room for me on the couch even though there were empty chairs for me to take. Even a week before, I'd have taken a chair. Now, I sat down beside her, Warren on her other side. "What are we watching?"

"Rose Bowl," Warren answered. "Northwestern versus Southern Cal. Second quarter; Southern Cal is winning." Despite his thoroughly blue-blood background, Warren took college football seriously. I could've cared less myself, but I liked sitting here with them, doing what other Americans did on New Year's Day. The easiness we'd learned together the night before was still evident the morning after, and the restless jealousy that I'd felt for Jean ever since her arrival seemed to have vanished like a morning fog burned off by the heat of the rising sun. I'd learned to like her last night - to like her a lot, in fact. Everyone else at the mansion but Jean was aware of what I'd been before, and I needed to know that she couldn't guess, that it wasn't obvious, that I wasn't branded. I could start over with primary colors.

Oddly, my cell phone rang at that very moment. I'd forgotten that I was even carrying it, much less that I'd turned it on. Warren and Jean both glanced at me in curiosity and I shrugged, pulling it out and opening it to say, "Hello?"

But the line hummed silent. "Fine," I said after ten breaths. "I didn't want to talk to you either." And shutting the phone, I turned it off, leaving it on the end table.

So we all sat together to watch the Rose Bowl, Warren occasionally erupting to his feet to swear and mutter about calls and plays I didn't understand. We ordered pizza delivery from a local Domino's. Hank had no doubt gone to bed, but the professor joined us at halftime. I glanced at him when he entered - a measuring look. He didn't respond to that immediately, but after the topping choices for the pizza had been settled on, he sent into my head, _You wished to speak with me? _

_Yeah, I do,_ I sent back. _But not now. Right now, I want . . . this. I want to watch football with my friends and eat pizza. _

And I could feel his pleasure at that. _By all means, Scott. Happy New Year. _

After the game was over, however, Xavier and I left while Warren and Jean watched endgame commentary, and Xavier took me up to his own bedroom suite. Once, I might have made certain assumptions, and panicked, but not now. It was early evening, and inside, he offered me a seat by the burning fireplace, in a big pine-green wing chair, and set about making tea on the lowboy under a window. Outside, I could see the reflected glow from the Christmas lights that Hank and I had strung early in December. Not elegant white, but bright and multi-hued. "White is so dull and predictable," Xavier had said, "and Christmas is all about brilliance."

So we'd strung the whole mansion with old-style, large-bulb light sets in shades of red and blue, green and orange. "It looks like a Chinese whore-house," I'd told Hank later. But I liked the colors. Brilliance, indeed. And there was nothing about this place even remotely like a whore-house. I ought to know.

When the tea was done, he brought me a cup - ever gracious. It was fixed with milk and sugar the way I liked it, and one reason that I'd come to trust Charles Xavier was because he served me, like Jesus washing the feet of his disciples. I was a human being to him, worthy of respect, and there were days I wanted to cry for that. "Thank you," I said now.

"You're quite welcome," he told me. "And feel free to smoke, Scott. Not in the rest of the mansion, but these are my rooms, and I don't always feel like going outside for a pipe."

I smiled at that. "Maybe I should take up the pipe instead of cigarettes."

"Maybe you should."

I laughed. I'd been joking, but somehow, the idea lodged in my head. Shaking out a cigarette, I lit it, then held it straight up to stare at the burning tip. An ugly habit. Jean had never said as much last night, but I'd been able to read the thought clearly in her face, and it suddenly mattered to me. Even Warren didn't smoke much. It was just me. Nicotine, coffee and chocolate. My addictions.

"There are worse things," Xavier said, obviously having followed that. "It's the same molecule, you know, rotated - caffeine and nicotine."

"It is?"

"Indeed."

Raising the cigarette to my lips, I took a drag, then crushed it out in the ashtray on the end table. It left a dark streak on clear glass. Xavier watched me.

"What is troubling you, Scott?"

"Jean said I send Cerebro off the scale. And Hank says I'm a mutant. Genetically, anyway. Why didn't you tell me all this shit?"

"I did."

I glanced up. "When?"

"I've told you this since you first arrived. I never concealed the fact that you were a mutant. It was you who were unready to hear."

I pondered that. He was right. From my very first day in Westchester, he'd said I was like them, but I hadn't believed him. "You didn't tell me I sent Cerebro off the scale, though."

"Scott, consider this logically - if you were resisting the knowledge that you were a mutant of any type, do you think you would have believed me if I'd told you that you were one of the most powerful mutants I've ever encountered?"

He had a point, and I snorted, still staring at the streak of ash in the ashtray. "So what does that mean? Sending Cerebro off the scale?"

"Not quite off the scale," he corrected lightly. "But you are a very high-level alpha mutant. More than that, I can't say, since we're not entirely sure what your mutation is. All that Hank and I can determine, at this point, is that it will be of the physical variety, instead of the psychic."

"You mean I'm going to change. Like Hank, or Warren."

"Perhaps; perhaps not. And how, we aren't sure. We think your mutation involves your ocular nerves - your eyes. But frankly, even now, Henry is unable to get a clear reading of anything above your jaw in X-Rays, or even in CAT scans." His grin was faint. "Whatever your body does, Scott, our equipment doesn't seem to like it."

"But I am a mutant."

"You most certainly are."

And this time, I believed. I think I wanted to believe, in fact. I _wanted_ to be like them, these people who'd adopted me as their own. But I still wasn't like them - not really. "What if my power _never_ manifests? I mean, Warren said something about me being 'latent.' What if that's all it is? What if I never get any powers?"

Would they make me leave?

Bending forward in his chair, Xavier clasped his hands between his knees, and caught and held my eyes. "It doesn't matter, Scott. This is your home. Even if you didn't carry the genetic code, this would still be your home. You will always have a place here. Always."

And that broke me. After all these years, after living tenuously in foster homes and surviving on the street, the word 'home' had an almost mythic power that was difficult to convey. _Home. _I was home. This was my family. I _belonged_.

Hiding my face in my hands, I wept, and could hear the squeak-grind of Xavier's chair as he moved it up next to my seat, then his hand fell on my head, stroking my hair. "Be my father," I choked out. "Please be my father." It sounded pathetic and small, but it rose from a Grand Canyon of loneliness. All I wanted was to be loved. "Be my father."

I felt his arm go around my shoulders to pull me in. Eyes still squeezed shut, I slid off the seat to lay my head in his lap. _Not flesh of my flesh, not bone of my bone, but still miraculously my own,_ he said into my mind. "I'll never have a son," he whispered aloud, hand still stroking my hair. "But if I could, I'd want him to be just like you."

* * *

><p><strong>Notes:<strong> Jean's "wing care" is lovingly dedicated to Pax. She'll know why. Wal-Mart is a nod to Lelia. Additional thanks to Heatherly and Domenika (as well as Naomi, as always). The arrival of Jean is a fun little nod to _X-Men_ #1.


	8. Diamonds in the Rough

When Hank had first introduced Jean to Warren and me, he'd called her 'ebullient,' and even if he'd meant it as a joke, it was still accurate. In those early days before medical school and residency rubbed off her sparkle with thirty-six hour shifts, a coffee addiction, and a chest-to-chest tango with Death on a regular basis, she'd been one of those people who could light up a room just by walking into it. She still can, but it's a cerebral charisma now, and perhaps a bit of my stone-faced mien has transferred to her, just as her joy has infected me and taught me to smile again without mulling it over first. But at twenty, she was utterly _charming_ in the best sense of the word.

"Boo!"

Snow smacked me in the back of the head, and almost knocked my pipe out of my mouth. "What the fuck?" I snarled, spinning around to find her laughing at me from twenty feet away. Her mauve, goose-down duster clashed horribly with her Crayola-rainbow-colored mittens and scarf. Her cheeks were pink from the cold, and she had another snowball in hand, all set to throw it at me. I took the pipe out of my mouth and pointed with the stem. "Do and die." The threat was serious if exaggerated, and she could tell. Scrunching up her nose in frustration, she tossed the snowball aside and came over to where I stood out by the main drive.

"You're no fun."

"I prefer to be dry, thanks."

"Spoilsport."

"Brat."

"Arrogant twit."

"Irish thundermouth."

But abruptly, I lost my hold on feigned anger and grinned at her. "Warren's not here this weekend."

"I know that. I came to visit you."

I snorted. "Yeah, right."

"I _did_!" She shoved at me. "You are such a cynic, Summers. And" - she reached over to pluck the pipe right out of my fingers - "if you think this thing is any healthier than those cancer sticks, I promise you it's not. Well, not by much." And she turned the pipe upside-down and tapped hot ashes into the snow near the driveway, kicking more snow on top. "Yuk."

"Give it back, witch."

"Gladly." She handed it over and I checked the bowl's side, to be sure she hadn't scraped it on the concrete curb.

"You're supposed to tap it, not bang it."

"Well I hope I cracked it!"

"No, you don't. I'd make you buy me another, and this is a good thirty-dollar bent briar."

"At least the tobacco smells better - until you light it. Why'd you take up a _pipe_, anyway?"

"Because you kept bitching at me about my cigs." But that wasn't my real reason. My real reason was that a pipe was . . .

Different. It was different, and the eccentricity of being sixteen with a pipe appealed to me. I suppose the fact that the professor smoked one had made some impact, but my primary motivation was rooted more in my decision to remake myself.

When I'd first arrived at Westchester, I'd mocked the clothes in my closet and the New England prep school image they conveyed. Now, I embraced it. So a month ago, I'd dropped by a local tobacconist to tell the counter help that I was looking for a pipe for my father. I doubt it had occurred to them that I might be lying, so I'd walked out with two thick-walled briars, a pipe nail, pipe cleaners, and some Amphora Blue tobacco. And I discovered that smoking a pipe was a good deal harder than it looked. I also learned small things, such as the fact that pipes must be broken in, paper matches leave a far worst taste in the mouth than wooden ones, and pipe stems come loose if one tried to clean them when they were still hot. I suppose I could've asked the professor to teach me the finer points but I hadn't wanted to make a production of it since a part of me had felt decidedly foolish. Instead, I'd practiced in secret until I'd caught the rhythm of it, and found that I enjoyed the entire process**:** packing in the tobacco and lighting it, smoking it, then cleaning the pipe afterward. It wasn't a disposable habit, and the deliberateness required made it seem less a boy's defiance than a man's choice.

"You don't think it suits me?" I asked Jean now, only half serious. She'd slipped her arm through mine as we strolled along the sidewalk towards the winter-frozen gardens hibernating until spring, a dull-brown collection of sticks like withered corpses in a glittering graveyard. Ice made fans and ferns on window panes, and it was snowing lightly, the flakes misting down to lodge in her hair and decorate her eyelashes.

"I think it's going to kill you one day," she replied seriously.

Once, I'd simply ignored others' opinions of me, viewing them with a detached boredom, but I'd started to care, and caring both scared and enraged me. So now I reacted badly to Jean's words. Pulling out of her grasp, I snarled, "What does it matter to you what happens to me?" and I stalked off through the garden.

"What do you mean what does it matter?" she yelled at my back. I didn't reply, just kept going, so she yelled even louder, "It matters because you're my friend, you stubborn jackass!"

Spinning, I shouted back, "You have no right to judge me!"

"I'm not judging you! I said it's going to kill you! That's a concern, not a judgment!"

"You don't know what's going to kill me! I could . . . walk out in front of a truck tomorrow!"

"Don't be stupid!"

We were yelling at each other across thirty feet of snow-covered lawn; I wondered if the professor could hear us inside. "I'm not being stupid! You're being a self-righteous prig!"

"God, what has gotten into you? Have you ever seen anyone die from lung cancer, Scott?"

"No - have you, Miss Cancer Society Spokeswoman?"

"Yes, dammit - yes!"

Even so far away from her, I could see that she was deeply upset, so I moved back in her direction. She and Warren had become my closest friends and I didn't really want to alienate them. "Who?" I asked, quietly.

She wiped tears off her face with the end of her Crayola scarf. "My grandfather," she said. "He smoked like a chimney for most of his life, even snuck them after they cut out his esophagus for throat cancer and he had to do it through that little hole in his neck." She shuddered and looked away. "It's, like, the stereotypical lung cancer horror story - a bad cliché."

"Did it happen that way?"

"Yeah."

"Then it's not a cliché."

Her smile was brief and bitter but I didn't miss it. "It's just . . . the most terrible death," she went on. "He got throat cancer, then tongue cancer, and finally lung cancer - just rotted away in pieces. He lived with us for the last eight months because my mother wouldn't put him in a home. It was hell. He was a nasty, mean old man anyway, and he got nastier and meaner as he got sicker. His room always stank from the disease, and the bed-sores, and the fact that we couldn't really bathe him well. It's a sweet, rancid smell, the stink of cancer." She glared across at me, her face hard. "It's not a death I'd wish on my worst enemy - much less a friend."

The words struck me hard below the breastbone. "I'm sorry," I said, and moved in a little closer. Less than ten feet separated us now. We stared across the gulf.

After a minute, she said, "Can I ask you a question?"

"Sure."

"Why _do_ you smoke? I mean seriously - I'm not being flip. Why'd you start?"

"You were never curious to try?"

"No. Not even as a kid. My mother smokes, and my dad smokes a pipe, but it's just . . . it's so gross. It grosses me out." Belatedly, she winced. "Sorry. I don't mean that as an insult. But I guess that's why I don't get it. It's not even a matter of not seeing the appeal. It's . . . "

" . . . repulsive to you," I finished for her.

"Yeah." She paused a long moment, then admitted softly, like a secret, "I remember being five and staring at one of my mother's cigarettes burning in a glass ashtray. The smoke was hypnotic, curling up through the air . . . ." She made a fluttering motion with her mittened fingers. "I thought about trying it - but I didn't. The smell of it, the ash, even that hypnotic curl - everything. It turned my stomach and I knew then that I'd never, ever want to smoke. But obviously you don't see it the same, so I've wondered how it looks from the other side - why someone would start, even _knowing_ it's bad for you. That's an honest question."

And I had to chew on it. No one had ever asked with real curiosity. They'd either lectured, or approved and tagged me as 'cool.' No one had asked what _I_ felt. "I like it," I said now, walking back over to her. "I like the taste."

"_Really? _If it tastes like it smells, I don't see how."

I grinned, briefly. "It doesn't, not quite. And the taste isn't the only reason I smoke. It's also for the nicotine. It's a weird drug - and yeah, I know it's a drug. So's caffeine. But nicotine sorta wakes you up and calms you down at the same time. It makes me more alert. That's why I like to smoke when I read out on my balcony. Well, I do when it's not twenty degrees outside. Smoking makes me _think_ better, or something."

This was apparently news to her. "It does?"

"Yeah. It's like in the morning, when you get your first cup of coffee. Same kind of feeling, only more intense."

The expression on Jean's face was an interesting study in enlightenment, then she squeezed my arm. "Thanks. I didn't think there was anything more to it than - I don't know - image or something."

"Image was part of it," I confessed. "At first. You want to seem older. That's not why I do it now. You guys bug me about it all the time - well, you and Hank - so it's not about image any more." I held up the pipe and looked at it, then shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe it is still about image, but a different image." I wasn't sure I wanted to look at that more deeply, so I asked instead, "You really came to visit me, not Warren?"

She laughed. "Yes, Scott. I really came to visit you."

"Why?"

And she laughed again. "Oh, I don't know - maybe because I _like_ you?"

Platonically only, of course, but that was fine with me. If she'd been coming to the mansion more regularly that spring because of Warren, her crush on him also rendered Warren too intimidating. So I was the one she sought out on Fridays when she arrived, and I was the one who helped carry her bags out to the car on Sunday afternoons. We'd grown close over esoteric discussions of books and TV, politics and Warren, but especially about books and Warren.

In my former life, I'd been an oddball for my love of reading, but narrative had been my escape, my method of retaining a marginal hold on my sanity. I'd discovered libraries in my days as a foster child. They were quiet, had air-conditioning in summer and heat in winter, and I could hang out there until I had to go back to whatever house I was living in at the time. But most of all, people didn't ask me questions there, and no cops told me to move on, no loitering. You're supposed to loiter at a library.

The first foster home I'd been sent to after being released from the hospital following the plane crash had been the best. It'd been used by the foster system especially for kids like me who'd needed healing both physical and emotional. I'd been in a coma for months, and had woken physically weak, and numb in heart at the abrupt and total change in my life. There'd been five kids in the house then and the woman had used to take us all to the library, turning us loose in the children's section. We'd needed quiet entertainment, and so my library addiction had begun. Once I'd been judged stable, they'd moved me to another home. It hadn't been bad, either, but it'd been located in Kearney, Nebraska, and aside from an undergrad university, there hadn't been much there outside cornfields and the flat, flat, endless-flat of the plains. So I'd taken to the library again. Fatefully, as it'd turned out.

An adjunct faculty member of the university's English department who was also a science-fiction writer had worked part time in the library's children's section. She'd been a weird woman with a weak chin, black hair down to the floor that she'd kept braided, and eyes darker than midnight. But I'd been a strange, quiet child myself, and like must have called to like. She'd noticed how much time I spent there and took me under her wing, introducing me to Lloyd Alexander and Ursula LeGuin, and teaching me to love fantasy and science fiction. It became the ultimate escape for me. Not just fictional tales but fictional _worlds_ in which I could imagine a life where planes didn't crash, leaving boys without a family, or in which life was infinitely _worse_, making my own not seem so bad in comparison.

That arrangement had lasted for three years until circumstance had forced me to leave when I was at the very brink of adolescence - a bad time to shift from the small and comfortable to the big city of Omaha. Things had gone downhill from there, but I'd never lost my love of books, libraries and speculative fiction. And in Jean, I found a friend with a passion for all three. Jean's telepathy had erupted suddenly when she'd been ten, and like me, her world had shattered catastrophically. She'd spent her adolescence shuffled between sanitariums, her home, and private tutors, considered too fragile, mentally and physically, for normal school. Instead, she'd found an escape in books and other worlds, so despite the enormous discrepancies in our backgrounds, we had in common a life of the mind. Warren thought us a bit weird, but put up with it. He read _Fortune_ and the _Wall Street Journal_, and played the stock market. We read Patricia McKillip and Kim Stanley Robinson, and imagined living on Mars.

Jean was also terribly physical, and had a bad habit of grabbing my arm when she wanted to tell me something important, as if I might be urged to listen as hard as she was gripping my wrist. Moreover, when she entered a room where I was, she almost immediately invaded my personal space, flinging an arm over my shoulders or ruffling my hair. Like a shy-proofed horse, I'd grown accustomed to her, and no longer flinched at her approach even if the touch of others could still spook me. Jean had special status, and thus acclimated, I found myself not only tolerating but even seeking out her casual affection.

"Are you here until Sunday?" I asked her now while we walked through the snowed-under garden, arm in arm.

"No, I have to go back in the morning. I need to finish working on an assignment."

"Oh," I tried to keep the disappointment out of my voice.

She caught on anyway and looked over at me. "Why don't you come with me? I could show you around the campus."

I almost laughed at that. Me, on a college campus? "I don't think so."

"Why not?"

And I couldn't explain without telling her things I had no intention of telling her. For all that we talked a great deal, it was rarely about the personal. She knew I was an orphan, and I knew she'd been in hospitals and sanitariums, but beyond that, we'd shared little. We might argue passionately about the pitfalls of gene therapy and cloning, or about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but personal details were taboo.

"I just don't want to go, okay?" I said.

She stared at me, surprised by my sudden hostility. "But why?"

"Because I fucking don't! Can't I _not_ want to do something without getting the mother of all Grand Inquisitions?"

And ditching her arm, I turned to stalk back towards the house. She was too shocked to follow.

It was a foolish thing to grow angry about, but the idea of accompanying her to Columbia, even for the day, intimidated me. That wasn't my world, and despite the professor's assertion that I was rapidly closing the gap in my education, I held no aspirations for college, nor did I believe that I'd live long enough to complete it, even if I had.

Since I'd accepted the fact I was HIV positive - or at least had stopped running from it - I'd lived my life predicated by 'ifs.' Henry had chided me once about that, sharing articles on treatment strategies for AIDS, and statistics for how many afflicted by the virus actually developed the syndrome. I wasn't interested. A part of me welcomed the closing of doors since it gave me an excuse to eliminate the future as anything to be taken seriously. The previous fall, for the first time in years, I'd wanted to live, but as winter turned into spring, I thought a lot about dying. I was too lazy, and too stubborn, to commit suicide, but it seemed that I wouldn't have to, or at least, not without a good excuse. One of my few recent trips into the city had been to pick up enough smack to fell a horse. I'd been saving for it. Heroin would be a good way to go, when I finally began showing symptoms. If I took it before bed along with a little filched scotch, it would slam me into a fatal coma and no one would be wiser until morning. Good Night, Sweet Prince. I'd be damned if I was going to die slowly. The people here were too good to me to put them through that hell, not to mention the medical bills. It wasn't like an HIV-positive ex-prostitute was a prime candidate for affordable health insurance.

Now, as I approached the side door that led inside through the den, I stumbled over a lump buried in courtyard snow and bent down to see what it was - hoping that Jean wasn't trailing after me. I didn't want to talk to her right now, but I couldn't hear her footsteps so I brushed away snow until my fingers touched stiff feathers, then I jerked my hand back and kicked at the snowy lump, revealing a dead bird. Not just any bird, either - an owl of some type. Its uncanny yellow eyes were open and staring.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck," I said, turning to hurry inside and almost forgetting to knock snow off my shoes in my haste to escape the owl. Inside, I tripped over the fine oriental runner before the door and swore vividly. I could feel the rage boiling up in my belly, and it confused me. Any small thing seemed to set me off of late, even rucked up rugs. I didn't like it. I didn't like being out of control this way.

I was shucking gloves and unbuttoning my duster when Jean finally entered. Her expression was cautious. I turned my back on her. "Scott?" I didn't reply. She tried another tact. "Did you see the dead owl out there? Wasn't that kind of weird?"

I spun on her. "Yes! I saw the goddamn owl! It's an owl! It's dead! Big fucking deal!" I flung my coat at the coat rack, missed, and had to go fetch it to hang it up. Bemused, Jean was still standing by the door, her face a study in hurt.

"What did I do? Why are you so mad at me?" Her voice was small. It made me want to hurt her. It made me want to hurt myself.

"You didn't do anything. Just leave me alone."

"Scott - "

"Drop it, dammit! Why do you always have to dig, dig, dig?" And I stormed out of the den, found my way to the big spiral staircase that ran upstairs, then stalked down the hallway towards my room. On the way, my phone rang. Thinking it was Warren because he'd promised to call and that was why I was carrying the phone in the first place, I flipped it open. "Summers."

Dead air. No one answered.

I waited a beat, then snapped the phone off - goddamn wrong numbers - and escaped into my room until supper, or that was the plan. Less than half an hour after I'd shut the door, someone knocked, followed by Hank's voice: "Scott, may I come in?"

Sighing, I got up to yank the door open. "Come to scold me?" I asked.

He just raised an eyebrow and strolled in. "Jean is sobbing down in the lab." It was a statement, a query, and a rebuke all at once. Not knowing what to say, and feeling guilty as hell, I turned my back. "Scott," he said, but didn't continue. Maybe he had no more idea what to say than I did. Silence was heavy.

"She wants to take me to _Columbia_," I said finally.

"And?"

"And I don't want to go!"

"May I ask why?" It wasn't hostile, merely curious.

So I answered. "I don't belong there. You know why."

A beat pause, then, "No, Scott. I don't."

I turned to glare, but his face was genuinely puzzled. "Goddammit," I snarled. "You _know_, Hank. You know what I was. What business do I have there - at a private college for New York's elite?"

Sighing, he rubbed his face. "You really have no idea, do you? Scott - college is not a mystical experience, and right now, you write better and think more analytically than the majority of college freshmen, even at Columbia."

I was stunned, and dubious, and my face must have showed it.

"I'm not lying to you," Hank said. "Or even stretching the truth." He invited himself to sit down in a chair at my desk and put his hands behind his head. "You know, I think it would be an excellent experience for you to visit Columbia, even to attend some classes with Jean."

"They don't hold classes on Sunday."

"No, but they do hold them on Monday and Tuesday. You can see what it's really like."

"_What? _You're joking, right? And, like, where would I fucking stay?"

"With Jean. She has an apartment, not a dorm." He tilted his head. "Unless you'd be uncomfortable with that. She also has a roommate."

I shrugged. The prospect of spending the night with two girls didn't bother me in the least. Sleeping on a couch sure wasn't the worst place I'd slept. But, "It's a dumb idea. It's not like there's any reason for me to go to college."

"Why not?"

"Hank! I'm not going to see thirty! I probably won't see twenty-five. What does it matter?"

"Because, Scott, you love to learn. It's one of your more admirable qualities. And even if you don't see twenty-five - a point that I'm unwilling to concede - there is _value_ in learning itself."

"Why? It costs money."

Hank rolled his eyes. "Because you _enjoy_ it, nincompoop. Playing mini-golf also costs money."

I snorted. "Yeah, well, the admission price is a little disproportionate between college and mini-golf."

Hank smiled. "Perhaps. Nonetheless. It costs nothing at all - aside from meals - for you to visit the campus with Jean."

Still skeptical, I ran my fingers along the edge of the dresser. I was already in such debt here, what did it matter? The enormity of it all was paralyzing. Besides, I was only sixteen, with the possibility of college still well over a year off. A lot could happen in a year. "All right, yeah, maybe."

And thus it was that I drove back into the city on Sunday morning with Jean and a small suitcase.

* * *

><p>Jean's apartment was in an area coming to be referred to as SoCo, the neighborhood south of the main Columbia campus, a block off Broadway on 98th Street in a stock-brick four-story brownstone. It had the charming detailing given to buildings constructed before the first world war with double-glazed picture windows in vertical sliding-box sashes, and egg-and-dart trim on the white-painted stone accents. Lions' heads graced the lintel above the entryway. Jean pointed it out as we drove past. Parking was a bitch, and I had to lug my suitcase three blocks. No one paid us any attention. After spending so much time in Westchester holed up at the mansion, or running in Warren's circles when he dragged me off somewhere, I'd forgotten how the city could be so comfortably anonymous. When I'd first arrived here, I'd found it cold and intimidating. I still did, but I'd gotten used to it, even come to appreciate it.<p>

"Here we are," Jean said - a little too cheerful - as she pulled open the main door to the stairwell. There was no doorman. This was too far above 96th Street for doormen to be common except in the nicer buildings, and I didn't much like that. I'd have to check the locks on her door. Nonetheless, another part of me was grateful. This was a bit closer to what I'd been used to than the lifestyle I'd expected for the Upper West Side.

I wondered why it didn't bother me to go places with Warren? Maybe because he lived so far beyond most of us, I may as well have been visiting another country. Jean, however, made me feel the difference, even while she didn't know, fully, how much of a difference there was. To her, I was just a poor foster kid whom the professor had taken in, and Warren and Hank had befriended. I think she knew there was more to it than that, knew I'd seen some rough times, but from a stray remark she'd once made, shop lifting seemed to be the extent of her suspicions, and I wasn't sure if I found that amusing, or a relief. Even after three months, my mask remained intact. Perhaps it wasn't unreasonable to think that I could be a phoenix, and rise from my own ashes.

I followed her up the stairs; she lived on the third floor in a one-bedroom whose picture window overlooked 98th Street. She knocked and called and I listened to the scrape of several bolts, then the door was opened to reveal a dark face, immediately split by a grin. "Hey, girl - you're back. Come on in." Jean's roommate eyed me as I followed Jean, and I remembered that I was still wearing the shades that accompanied me outside almost all the time now. Direct sunlight gave me splitting headaches.

Removing them, I set down the bag but stayed quiet by the door. Jean turned and, hand on my arm, said, "Misty, this is Scott, who I've told you about. And Scott, this is my roommate Misty Knight." I'd heard about Misty, too. Like Jean, she was a daughter of academia, her father a psychology professor at Bard, where Jean's father taught, and her mother an English professor, and poet, too. The daughter looked anything but. Her hair was shaved very close to her skull, almost military, and she wore practical clothes. Her glance was assessing like a cop's, which according to Jean, she was studying to become - a police detective. She took criminal justice at John Jay College, a part of the CUNY system. John Jay was a commuter campus, so she roomed with Jean because they already knew each other.

Now, a little belligerent, I met her gaze, all my innate distrust of authority types rising in my gut. The professor had earned my trust. This girl hadn't. Turning away, I pulled my suitcase over to the couch (where I assumed I'd be sleeping), and plopped down, slouching, arms crossed over my chest and still dressed in my trench coat. Misty glanced at Jean; it was pointed, and I wondered if they were speaking telepathically - wondered if Misty knew her roommate was a mutant. Then she said, "I'm going back to work on my paper," and disappeared into the tiny kitchen where a laptop was set up on the small eat-in table.

I studied the room**: ** small, cozy and overstuffed. They had a surprising amount of furniture for two college girls - the couch and two chairs with attractive throws and matching pillows, end tables, lamps, books, knick-knacks, and a small entertainment center with a TV, a stereo and stacks of CDs balanced precariously. One wall was brown brick and held a fireplace. It looked unused. There was a rag rug on the floor in front. The whole space was perhaps ten by ten. The kitchen-dinette was offset in a tiny nook, with the bathroom tucked behind it, and a very small bedroom across from it.

"Do you want a Coke or something?" Jean asked, all nervous to play the good hostess. She'd come to stand in front of me, hands laced.

"No, I'm fine." What I wanted was my pipe, but I knew that would never fly in Jean's flat.

"You're not hungry?"

"No, Jean - I'm fine. Sit down."

She did, hands still folded and resting on her knees now. We'd never really made up after our quarrel of the day before. Apologies weren't easy for me; I'd just caught her at supper and told her that I was coming into the city with her after all, if it was still okay. She'd said it was. The professor had then smoothly suggested that I stay for a few days to visit classes with Jean, and I'd wondered if Hank had put him up to that, or if he'd put Hank up to prodding me earlier. But in either case, they were in cahoots. Jean had said it would be fine with her. So here I was. And neither of us was too sure what to do or say next.

"I thought you had an assignment you needed to work on."

"Well, I do, but - "

"You don't have to entertain me. I'm not here to interfere with your schoolwork. Do what you need to do. I brought a book." And I pulled a paperback out of my coat pocket.

"You always have a book," she said with a smile.

So she busied herself preparing for her presentation while I read on the couch. Once, I took her keys and went outside for a smoke because they didn't have a balcony. Her mouth pinched in disapproval at that, but she said nothing when I left or when I came back. I had to step over her where she had her materials spread out on the floor - magic markers, glitter, sequins, glue, scissors, white posterboard rolled up like a scroll with four rolling-pin handles sticking out the edges, and what looked to be a flower box of the sort used for long-stemmed roses. Just now, she was putting elaborate decoration on the latter. "What on earth are you doing?" I finally ventured to ask.

"I'm making a Torah scroll and scroll case. Well, a mock up of one, obviously."

Squatting down near where she was sitting, I watched her glue sequins on the flower box in the shape of Hebrew letters. "What is this for? Some art class?"

She smiled without looking up. "No, no. World Religions. The professor divided us up into groups. Each group has to research and give a presentation on some world religion. I'm in the Judaism group."

"I'd think your professor would be more interested in what you know than what you can make."

"Oh, we're mostly squared away on the presentation itself; we just wanted to have some props." Finished with the sequins, she held it up to show me, gold letters on blue background and gold ribbon trim. The 'scroll' fit neatly inside the box. "The covers protect the scroll, but they're also a sign of respect," she explained. Synagogues usually have a couple scrolls, and they're kept in this closet-thing they call an ark, up behind the front lectern."

"Never been in a synagogue."

"I hadn't either, until we got the assignment." She glanced at me, then asked with diffidence, "Were you raised anything? Any religion, I mean?"

"Catholic. How about you?"

"Episcopalian." She wrinkled her nose. "Completely predictable and unexciting. Also very nominal."

"Same here. Very lapsed Catholic. I haven't been to Mass in ... Well, I went to Midnight Mass at Christmas, with Warren, but it was a lark." I grinned. "He was pretty drunk."

That made her laugh, then she lowered her eyes, almost shy. "Do you believe in God? I don't mean to pry, but I'm curious."

This was, I thought, one of the more personal conversations we'd ever had, and I wasn't sure how to answer her question. "I . . . don't know. Do you?" I wanted to turn the spotlight off me.

"Yes," she said quietly. "But not the way the church teaches - not some old guy with a white beard. I wonder how many people really do believe that. But anyway," - she frowned; it was thoughtful rather than angry - "There is something more than flesh and blood. That's why this class is so interesting. I didn't know too much before I took it, and even if I don't necessarily agree with other religions, I like hearing what they teach." She wasn't looking at me. She was looking up at the gilt-frame mirror above the fireplace behind me. "As for what I believe? I believe we have a soul, and that it lives on past our bodies. And I believe the universe is more than a cosmological accident. But beyond that?" She shrugged. "I can't say."

"What makes you so sure we have a soul?" It was easier to attack someone else's beliefs than to explain my own - or even to form my own.

But the expression she turned on me made me feel guilty. "I don't have some mathematical proof, Scott. I was just answering your question."

Ashamed, I looked down again at her 'scroll case'; I couldn't decide if it was ingenious, or just ridiculous. "Sorry. I didn't mean it as an attack. I guess I want somebody to prove it to me - that there's something more than this." I raised my hand to indicate my body. I wanted to know that I wouldn't just . . . stop, when the end came. A year ago, I'd have welcomed extinction as an escape. Now, facing it, I was ambivalent, and dying would be more attractive if I were sure some part of me would go on.

"I can't give you proof," she told me. "All I can say is what I feel. When I touch minds there's something more there than mere body." She looked down at hers. "I guess that's why, being a telepath, I never quite feel like I'm _in_ mine. I live up here" - she touched her head - "not here." She touched her gut. "My body feels . . . awkward. Like lead." She paused, then added. "I don't like it much, really. It's ugly." It was a surprising admission, intimate, and I reached out to take her hand, squeezing. It was, I thought, the first time I'd touched her by my own choice rather than submitting to her touch of me.

"You're not ugly," I told her.

She eyed me skeptically. "I'm an Amazon, Scott. What guy wants to date a girl bigger than he is? And my skin's all pasty; I never tan in the summer, just burn. And I have freckles, and there's no body in my hair, and I have thin lips, and funny ears, and - "

"Beautiful eyes and great bones," I interrupted. "Beauty's pretty subjective, Jean. And yeah, so your ears are a little funny, but there's nothing wrong with your mouth - or your hair that a good haircut wouldn't fix. And you're a redhead, dope. Your skin's supposed to be fair."

She stared at me in shock, maybe because I wasn't just handing her platitudes. I was telling her what I saw when I looked at her. "I'm still a giant - almost six feet tall! And skinny as a rail!"

"So are most models."

"Oh! Right! Scott, don't be ridiculous!"

Reaching out, I lifted her chin, turning her head first one way, then the other. "I'm not. Like I said, you have good bones. Let somebody at you who knew what they were doing with make-up and hair and clothes . . . . Yeah. You could be a model."

She slapped my hand away and got up, stalking off into the kitchen. I heard her open the fridge violently and rummage inside. "The boy - he got a point." It was the other woman's voice.

"Shut up, Mercedes."

"You got a complex that won't quit, girl."

There was no reply to that, and I waited for Jean to return. When she did, her face was flushed, though whether from anger or pleasure - or both - I wasn't sure. She had a glass of coke in her hand and glared at me. "Don't say anything." Sitting down amid the spread of her project, she placed her glass on an end-table coaster, then silently went back to work.

After she was done, we went out to eat - Chinese food at The Cottage. They served us free wine with dinner even though we were underage and I gave mine to Jean because it was terrible. At least the pork lo mein was fine. Then again, when it came to food, I'd learned not to be choosey. By contrast, Jean fussed and picked water chestnuts out of her Moo Goo Gai Pan; I ate those, as well. When we left, she was a little tipsy from two glasses of house white and leaned on me all the way back to her place. The chill air flushed her cheeks and the wind lifted her hair, and a few passing men looked at her twice in her low rider jeans and bomber jacket, and once, a woman. If that wasn't checking out her ass, I didn't know what was. I couldn't fathom Jean's doubts about her looks. Back at her place, we made tea and talked until Misty returned from wherever it was she'd gone, then both girls headed to bed while I went outside for a final pipe. The night sky was never clear in New York, or dark. Myriad lights from the city reflected off the atmosphere, making a dun-orange bowl above. But that night, I could see the moon; it was nearly full and waxing, and the silver light hung above me like a promise. I watched people for a while, even after my pipe was out, then I went back inside to bed.

Working at night, I'd learned to sleep through all kinds of early racket by the simple expedient of putting my pillow over my head. So when the girls got up to prepare for class, I rolled over on the sofa, burrowed under a pillow, and crashed again until Jean came over to pull me - quite literally - right off the couch cushions.

"Godfuckingdammit!" I yelled when I landed with a thud on hardwood flooring.

"You'd better get up and shower, Scott, or you'll make me late for my first class."

Jean, of course. I glared at her, then at the clock. Eight in the morning. Unlike me, Jean was happy to sign up for early classes. "Man, can't you come back and get me after lunch?"

"Oooh, Mr. Pampered can't get up with the rest of us." Misty Knight stood just outside the kitchen nook, hands on her hips. "What's wrong? Missing your butler?"

My mouth fell open and I must have looked amazingly stupid, but I was simply so shocked, it was automatic. It wasn't the blunt rudeness of the remark - a rudeness that had turned Jean bright red in embarrassment - it was the assumption. I'd been so worried about passing that it had never occurred to me that I might actually be succeeding. I couldn't fool Warren's crowd, but, evidently, I could fool the lower orders, at least for a little while.

And I found that I didn't like it, not when it drew a disapproval I'd never earned.

"Misty," Jean was saying, making calming motions with her hands, "it's really not what you - "

"Forget it," I snarled, locking eyes with Misty Knight as I had the night before when I'd first arrived. "I can get up whenever I need to, and I've never had a fucking butler in my life, bitch."

"_Scott!_"

"She started it," I snapped, ditching the blanket and standing up - though I was wearing only bikinis - and digging through my suitcase. Then I stalked into the bathroom past two suddenly silent women. Being naked, or nearly so, didn't bother me, at least not when it was my choice.

By the time I emerged again - dressed - Misty had vanished. Jean had a bagel ready for me, and some milk. She didn't say anything; I didn't, either. Getting our coats, we walked to campus and I bought coffee on the way at a deli called Mama Joy's. Jean lugged her forest green Lands End soft satchel and I carried a notebook, mostly so I wouldn't feel empty-handed and extraneous.

Columbia University was more a graduate and professional school than an undergraduate college, so being younger than even the freshmen, I felt distinctly out of place, despite the fact that no one was dressed in a way I'd expected for an ivy league school. I stood out as much for my preppy attire as for my youth, and I stuck the stem of my pipe in my mouth, trying to look older. It was a new pipe, a bent apple. I liked the curve; it fit into my hand better. Jean rolled her eyes and said I looked silly. "And here I was, hoping for distinguished," I replied.

Her smile was mischievous, and unexpected. "A tweed coat would work better."

"What? Not a deerstalker? I've already got the pipe and the trench coat. Elementary, my dear Watson."

She broke up laughing and dragged me off to her nine o'clock class in Hamilton Hall.

Hank had been right. College was a good deal less daunting than I'd expected, though Jean had two pre-med classes on Monday - microbiology and physiology - and that should have intimidated the hell out of me. But she also had a calculus course, and while the subject matter was over my head, I could _almost_ understand it. I even took some notes of my own. After her final bio class, she met with her religion group in a lounge on the sixth floor of Fairchild, leaving me to explore alone for an hour. The bio library was up there as well, so that's where I went. Libraries drew me like magnets, and at least I could get into this one without a student ID - which wasn't the case, apparently, with Butler, the main library. Of all the places on campus I'd have _wanted_ to go, it would've been there, and I was annoyed at being thwarted.

While perusing a UMI photocopy of a doctoral thesis about famine and plague in the later Middle Ages, my phone rang. People turned to glare and I shoved the book back, trotting out of the stacks into the hall beyond. A big human skeleton stared back at me from inside a glass display case. It was a bit unnerving, but I turned my back on it and flipped open the phone. "Hello?"

"Hey! How's college life treating you?"

Warren's preternaturally deep voice. I smiled. "Well, I didn't understand a bit of microbiology. They may as well have been talking Greek. But she took me to her calc II class, and ... I don't know. I almost, kinda, sorta followed that. It's way over my head, but it was the sort of over my head where I think it won't be, someday."

"See? I knew you'd be okay."

"What?" I said into the receiver. "Are you in league with Hank and the professor?"

"Not in league with them. But I don't think it was a bad idea for you to actually go sit in on some classes."

I rolled my eyes. "Are you still coming into the city for dinner?"

"Wouldn't miss it."

"Okay. We're in the library. Um, the biology library."

"Fine, I should be there in" - a pause while he no doubt looked at his watch - "an hour? Rush hour cometh, y'know." It was three-thirty just then. "I'm bringing the Boxter. I can't get on campus unless I throw my weight around, and I'd rather not. How about if you two meet me at the John Jay Gate? It's closer to Amsterdam and there's a garage right across the street. I'll park there - probably end up with a scratch in my paint, but it's the easiest solution. I'll phone just before I arrive, so you don't have to stand out in the cold."

"Right. Thanks."

"See you in a few." And the connection closed. I went back in to tell Jean about our arrangements, then continued my perusal of the stacks.

Thirty minutes later, I moseyed back to where she was still meeting with her group, then had to wait while they finished up. Warren called in the meantime. I filled my pipe and eyed Jean until she tore herself away and we hurried to the main entrance. Once outside, I lit the pipe and put on my shades to cut the sunset glare, then we walked swiftly down to the gate on 114th and leaned up against a post to wait. "You ready? For tomorrow?"

"Yes, I think so." She was huddled into her coat, though it had been a rather warm day for late March; my own coat was open in front. I wasn't sure if her pose was from cold or nerves. I'd been watching Jean all day. She combined such a strange mix of assertiveness and uncertainty, moving about campus with her head down and at the edge of sidewalks, steering clear of groups of laughing students. Yet she'd also clearly been in charge of her presentation group. They'd been waiting for her to arrive, and when the meeting had ended, it had been Jean who'd finalized various presentation duties. She was a puzzle.

Warren arrived shortly. I saw his distinctive gold Porsche Boxter turn into the parking garage, and five minutes later, he was jaywalking across 114th to join us. Then we moseyed three blocks to V&T's on Amsterdam. "_Pizza?_" Jean asked.

"Hey - we should get the whole collegiate experience here."

Jean just rolled her eyes. However shy she might be on campus, with us, she was her usual Jean self. "I _live_ the collegiate experience, War. I think you two are just looking for an excuse." It was no secret that Warren and I could eat pizza at least once a day when given the option, so he didn't bother to reply. We went in. It wasn't a slice-to-go place but an actual restaurant with the clichéd plastic red-and-white checkered tablecloths, and waiters dressed in the most obnoxious green jackets I'd ever seen. It was obscenely early for dinner, barely five o'clock, so we didn't have to wait for a table. We were seated near a window that, at sunset, did little to lighten the dimness of the interior. Aside from predictably rude waiters, supper was unremarkable but pleasant. Jean flirted with Warren, he flirted back less seriously, and I watched.

I couldn't quite decipher Warren - whether he liked Jean, or just liked the attention, or was too polite to brush her off with enough force that she'd get the hint. Now and then, his eyes strayed to me and he smiled a little. I smiled back, but reflexively, and when Jean took a bathroom break, I leaned over the booth table to say, "So - are you going to ask her out?"

He seemed genuinely surprised by the question. "I hadn't planned on it."

"She likes you."

"I know." His gaze dropped to the table. "She's a nice girl . . . ." he trailed off, and strangely, I felt bad for Jean, as if I were the one being rejected.

"She _is_ a nice girl," I said, picking up my glass to take a sip of tea.

"I _know_, Scott. It's . . . the whatever it is . . . isn't there. I like her a lot, just not in the way she wants." He raised his eyes finally. They were blue but with a gold ring around the iris so that in certain lights - like now - they appeared more green. "What about you? Do you like her?"

Now it was my turn to be broadsided by a question. "I've never even thought about it!" And I hadn't. Warren studied my face as if he suspected me of lying, and I felt that a point needed to be made. "Look, she's four years older than me. She's like a big sister. And besides" - I set down my glass with a thump - "she doesn't know what I did - what I _was_ - before the professor found me. And I don't plan to tell her. I just want to forget about it."

"You don't think she could handle it?"

"I don't know and I don't want to find out."

He shook his head and played with the remains of thin pizza crusts on his plate. Warren hated the crust. "Secrets have a way of getting out. I should know." His smile was wry.

I stared at the wall. "It sounds like you're trying to match-make me."

"Well, you were trying to match-make _me_."

"With a little more cause. She likes you; you seemed to like her. I don't figure into that equation."

Warren's eyes were narrow, but in a thoughtful way. "You spend a lot of time with her, for not figuring into the equation."

"We're just _friends_, goddammit! I don't - I told you once before, I can't _feel_ that way, okay? It's just . . . dead. I don't like boys; I don't like girls; I don't like anybody. Period."

Letting myself feel those things might release all the bad stuff that I'd buried inside, and that scared the hell out of me. The only way I knew to control it was to not think about sex.

His gaze had turned gentle and he held up both hands. "Okay. Sorry. I won't bring it up again."

"Good." Still irritated, I drew with a finger in water rings for a moment, then rose abruptly and muttered, "I need to take a piss," and left him there. In the little bathroom tucked between the kitchen and the deli cases, I locked the door and dropped my pants to sit down on the toilet. I didn't really need to go, but it got me away before I said something I'd regret. Leaning over, I let my forehead rest on the heel of one palm and sitting thus, I had a clear view of my privates. Pulling my penis up with my free hand, I stared at it. Stupid, ugly, purple worm. It disgusted me.

Letting go, I stood to pull my pants back up, then washed my hands in cold water, staring at my own face. A thought suddenly occurred to me. Warren hadn't been trying to match-make me with Jean; he'd been fishing to see what I felt myself. He wasn't interested in Jean because he was still in love with me, and he couldn't turn off his feelings anymore than Jean could. Yet I found his attraction no less disturbing now than I had three months ago. What an ironic trio we were. Jean was in love with Warren, Warren was in love with me, and I couldn't feel a damn thing except this phantom tingle in my amputated emotions.

What I didn't realize then was that my emotions weren't amputated, merely asleep, and the tingle I felt wasn't phantom pain, but a reawakening.

The rest of my visit to Columbia passed without incident. Misty Knight managed to avoid me for all of Tuesday, either by disgusted design or in embarrassment, and Jean's world religions class was (perhaps predictably) the most interesting thing I attended. Somewhere in the last forty-eight hours, I'd lost my fear of college, as Hank and Xavier had no doubt known that I would. I still wasn't sure it was worth the waste of money for me to attend, but maybe I could take some classes at a local community college and get a degree in something esoteric and useless like philosophy.

Jean drove me back on Tuesday afternoon, then stayed for supper and a post-meal game of Scrabble at the eat-in table in the kitchen - Hank, Warren, Jean and myself, munching peanuts and checking the dictionary every fifteen minutes because Hank kept coming up with words none of the rest of us had ever before heard of. At one point, my cell phone rang. I'd forgotten that I hadn't switched it off after we'd returned. When I answered, I got dead air. Again. "What the hell _is_ it with me and wrong numbers?" I slammed the phone shut and turned it off. "You'd think people could at least fucking _apologize_."

The other three were looking at me curiously. "My cell phone. I keep getting wrong numbers."

"On a cell phone? Isn't that a bit . . . odd?" Jean asked.

"Yeah!" I snorted. "My number must have belonged to someone really popular."

"Maybe a _lady of the evening_, and the caller isn't sure what to make of a guy answering," Jean said. She was grinning her impish grin, but Warren had paled and was rearranging his letters tiles while Hank coughed, and I just stared at her. "Okay," she said, holding up her hands. "That went over like a lead balloon. Sorry." She was obviously perplexed.

I looked down at my hands braced on the edge of the table. I didn't know what to say. She hadn't meant anything by it and there was no way to reply without eliciting questions I didn't want to answer. Better, maybe, just to change the subject. "I think I'll talk to the professor about closing this account and getting a new number."

"Probably smart," Warren said. It was his turn and he laid out his tiles on the board. "Here. Top that one, Hankster. 'Triscuit' - eight letters, and _you_ said proper names counted."

And thus the game went on; I got up and went to the fridge for a Coke, but when I opened the door, there were no cans in stock on the second shelf.

"Mother fuck!" I yelled, already on edge, and all three of them gaped at me as I slammed the refrigerator door shut. "I'm gone two fucking days and nobody can be fucking bothered to put more Coke in the damn fridge? I am _always_ the one who has to restock. _Always! _Is it too much to ask that the last person to get a Coke put more in? What about that is so _god_damn hard?"

They were all just . . . staring. Jean's mouth hung a little open, but both Warren and Hank appeared embarrassed, and for some perverse reason, that pleased me. I could make them feel guilt. They weren't angry at me, they weren't yelling, they weren't hitting, they weren't throwing things. Instead, Hank and Warren stared at the tabletop, then Hank said softly, "My apologies, Scott. In all honesty, I simply didn't think about it - which is not an excuse, mind you. I will certainly endeavor to remember, in the future."

"Maybe we could make a little sign," Warren offered. "_'Took the last Coke? Put more in.'_ "

And with their words, my momentary feeling of power vanished. I turned back to face the closed door. "Sorry. I shouldn't have yelled." And I dashed out of the room even as Jean called behind me, "Scott!"

I ran outside because I didn't know where else to go. The snow of just a few days before had mostly melted, though a little lingered in shadows and flower-beds. I kicked at dirty clumps as I walked, seeking some way to release the rage and shame. I'd yelled at my friends over something as minor as forgetting to put Coke in the fridge - what kind of idiot was I?

But they hadn't yelled back. They'd apologized, and I wasn't sure if I found that freeing or disturbing.

I should have known Xavier would find me. He was waiting, blanket over his lap, inside the portico that ran from the conservatory out into the back lawn. Seeing him there, I stopped on the path, arms folded across my chest. I'd run outside without a jacket, and while it wasn't below freezing, it was still quite chilly. A sweater and turtleneck weren't really enough. He didn't say anything to me, simply waited. Finally, I slogged up into the portico and sat down on a bench, close enough to show I was willing to talk, but far enough away that he had to motor over to me.

He did. Then we continued to sit in silence for some time. Finally, the weight of it got to me. "I yelled at them over Coke."

"Mmm." He pulled out his pipe and filled it with tobacco.

"Pretty dumb, huh?"

"Mmm. Were you angry?"

"Well - yeah."

He just nodded and lit the pipe, drew on it a few times to get it going, then said, "How often do you find the refrigerator empty of Coke?"

"A lot. I mean, like, all the time. I'm the only one who remembers to put in more."

"Hardly an unreasonable request, then, to ask them to remember - nor a 'dumb' thing to be angry about."

"But I threw a fit," I said, wrapping arms around myself and leaning over. "Lately, I feel all out of control. Stupid things just . . . set me off."

"Perhaps you feel out of control because you're feeling in the first place?"

It was such an odd question that it brought me up short. "Huh?"

"Let me ask you this - when was the last time you were really mad, Scott? Not irked, not annoyed, but throw-the-dishes-and-break-the-china angry?"

I blinked. "I don't know." And I didn't. "A long time. Maybe never." The professor's eyebrows went up at that. "Okay, well, I probably got that mad when I was a kid. I mean, kids do, but it hasn't happened in a long time. I'm not a kid, and what good would it do?"

Xavier was nodding, and I thought he would agree with me, but instead, he said, "Good or bad doesn't matter. Feelings are neither one - neither good nor bad. We have them - or they have us." He studied me and puffed on his pipe. "Anger doesn't go away just because you don't think it will do any good. Scott, you have been on your own since you were eight. In that time, you have been abused, neglected and taken advantage of, repeatedly."

"Well, yeah, but so have a lot of other - "

"_Others_ are not _you_. You're rationalizing. Others may feel their own anger, but it's yours that _you_ feel. It's the injustice against _you_ that hurts, down inside."

His words were fine knives, shredding the chain mail of my own protections. Links fell away, exposing something red and bloody underneath. "What the fuck good does it do - dwelling on it? I just want to fucking forget it, okay?"

"No, it's not okay, because you can't forget it, not until you've actually let yourself feel it. Your feelings will come out, Scott - one way or another. In and of themselves, feelings are simply our natural responses to the situations in which we find ourselves. They don't have to 'do' anything beyond that. _Forgetting_ them isn't possible - instead, we learn to _release_ them in healthy ways."

"_Release_ them?" I asked, standing abruptly to stalk off down the length of the portico, then turn and come back, halting about ten feet away to shout, "You don't know what the fuck you're asking, old man! If I let this out, I don't know what'll happen. Breaking the fucking china is the least of it! I'll probably kill something! Just leave me alone and let me deal my way, okay? It's safer for everybody."

And I ran off again, back into the house and upstairs to my room where I locked myself in for the night. About an hour later, I heard the hum of the professor's wheelchair stop outside my door, but he didn't knock. Instead a slip of paper was pushed beneath, then I heard the chair hum away. I eyed the paper as if it were a snake, but curiosity finally got the better of me and I walked over to pick it up and unfolded it. A bit of poetry was quoted inside. It read:

_. . . spread out in front of her on the bathroom floor_  
><em>lay a whole night's work damn peculiar song she<em>  
><em>thought bewildered by her own handwriting it<em>  
><em>said<em>  
><em>help me<em>  
><em>well it's true her songs didn't ever sell very<em>  
><em>good but that was one great lady on the<em>  
><em>bathroom floor i hope to shout and it hurts a lot<em>  
><em>to tell about her<em>  
><em>makes me love you enough not to<em>  
><em>protect you at all.<em>

The name Martin Bell was written beneath the text, and beneath that, _You can't go over it or around it or under it, Scott. You can only go through it. But there are people waiting on the other side who'll catch you. _

* * *

><p>Aside from that note, Xavier said nothing to me about my outburst the next morning when I showed up with Warren for lessons. Sometimes the professor tutored us together, sometimes apart. At first, I'd been nervous of taking lessons with Warren, sure I'd look stupid beside the older boy's upper-crust education - he read Latin for God's sake - but I'd surprised myself. There were things I did better than Warren - anything with numbers, for instance. It wasn't that Warren was bad at math, but Warren's bent was pragmatic. All of his family problems aside, he'd been born and bred to business where math was merely a tool.<p>

To me, though, numbers were a game. Clear, clean, easy to understand - and a game. I looked forward to math lessons while Warren dreaded them. "You're a math geek, Summers," he told me, and it was true.

Wednesday, Thursday and Friday of that week passed without incident, and Jean arrived for the weekend to find Warren and I doing derivatives in the den. She pushed open the side door with her overnight bag and let in the crisp smell of spring. Snow last weekend; spring this weekend. "The crocuses are blooming," she said, eyeing me like one might a rabid dog who could bite. Then again, the last time she'd seen me, I'd been howling about a lack of Coke in the refrigerator, and my mood had been dicey, to say the least, for the past few weeks now. So I smiled at her and hoped it looked friendly. Apparently so, because she dropped her bag to shut the door and came over to the table where we were working, slinging one arm over each of our shoulders. "Watcha up to, guys?"

"Math," Warren groaned. "Well, he's up to it. I'm dying, here."

"Want some help?"

"What I want is a waiver, but I'm not likely to get it, so help will do. Scott keeps trying, but I can't say it's actually _helping_."

"Fuck you," I said pleasantly, vacating my chair so Jean could have it. "I'm going outside for a minute. Be back shortly." We all knew I was going out for a smoke, but leaving my reason unspecified kept the peace.

It was still sunny, but thunderheads threatened on the western horizon and it'd be raining by nightfall. I packed my pipe and lit it, then walked around the flower-beds. Jean was right; the crocuses that had sprouted a week ago, peeking up through snow, had now opened their star buds like yellow and white constellations. The daffodils were coming up, too, and maybe they'd bloom late next week. April first was Monday. April Fool's Day. Six months. I'd been here six months though it seemed far longer. I'd watched the leaves turn, and the snow fall, and now the world was on the verge of blooming. Sitting down on a patch of grass just starting to green, I enjoyed the quiet.

But if wealth bought privacy and space, this close to the city, civilization was never far off. I could hear the hum of vehicles on the highway beyond Greymalkin Lane; a plane, high up, left a vapor trail through the sky; and coming in from the south was the distinct whup-whup of helicopter blades. I glanced at my watch; it was nearing rush hour. The traffic choppers were up, though they didn't usually fly this far north unless there was an accident. Maybe it was some business executive being transported out of the city to avoid the jam.

The helicopter flew in a sweep over the grounds, heading for the highway, and then circled west towards the river. I watched it idly as I finished my pipe, then went inside.

The rest of the evening, I spent on my best behavior. Now that I had friends, I didn't want to lose them for acting like an unpredictable bastard. While Warren finished the rest of his homework, Jean and I took out horses for a short ride as the sun was setting. We caught only a peek of brilliant gold and orange and red on the horizon below the purple cloud line, and by eight, it was storming. All of us ordered out for pizza, and watched movies in the den.

The professor _liked_ pizza, and never mind the exotic stuff like California Pizza Kitchen. He wanted old-fashioned New York greasy pepperoni with extra cheese. It was among the most unexpected things that I'd learned about him early on, and had gone a great way toward upending my assumptions.

Between the hard drum of rain on the big windows and the blue glow of the TV set, most of us were half asleep by eleven, sprawled across each other on the davenport. I occupied the end, so it was only Jean with her head in my lap. When we heard the slamming of car doors outside, we all started and sat up drowsily. "Who could that be?" Xavier asked. The gate was locked for the night. He went to one of the windows to look out, but between the downpour and the darkness, apparently he couldn't see anything and moved towards the door, maybe intending to open it, I wasn't sure. But something like a premonition brushed the nape of my neck, raising the little hairs there. "Don't open the door!" I yelled.

Jean, Hank and Warren all stared and Xavier turned in his chair - even as the door was kicked forcefully inward. It hit a wheel of the professor's chair and knocked it over, spilling Xavier onto the imported oriental carpet. His head struck the wooden leg of a display cabinet as bullets pocked the back wall, the rapid fire of an automatic. Jean screamed and I rolled backwards off the couch seat, shoving it towards the door and yanking Jean under the coffee table, flinging a couch throw on top of her. The gunfire came again, aimed high; it shattered one of the windows so that Jean and I were sprayed with glass and pelting rain. I looked up just in time to see Hank fall. He must have leaped for the upper sill. I had no idea where Warren was. Things were happening too fast. Jean was whimpering and I shoved her face into the carpet as I added a few more pillows to the camouflage concealing her - and doing so badly, I had to admit, but it was the only thing I could think of. If I'd told her to run, she'd have been shot.

Six men with submachine guns had moved into the room.

I recognized them. They belonged to Jack Winters - Jack O' Diamonds.

Ice crystallized in my gut as freezing spring rain blew in the window, soaking me.

Jack himself strolled through the splintered door next, wearing his customary white. He always dressed in white and wore enough diamonds to ransom a minor prince. On the street, we'd called pimps like him a sugar fly - almost a caricature. All he needed was a foggy lens and a cooing choir to be a televangelist. Instead, he had his bully-boys.

Everything in me was sinking. "How did you fucking _find_ me, you son of a bitch?"

He glanced around before answering. The professor was still on the floor where he'd rolled out of his chair. He was unconscious. There would be no help from his telepathy, and Hank was a silent lump by the window, unconscious or dead. Warren - I could see now - was being held down by two men standing on his wings. He strained to move, but even as powerful as his wings were, he couldn't budge the ex-linebacker-types pinning him down.

Walking casually towards me, the first thing Jack did was kick me across the face with one white wingtip shoe. "Nobody. Leaves. Me," he said, grabbing my hair and yanking my head up again. "Nobody. Especially not a cheap little Puerto Rican cunt and a cock-sucking peach boy like you."

And he dropped a red jacket in my lap, the color less brilliant for the dark stain of dried blood on half of it. Two things were pinned to one lapel. First, a newspaper clipping dated with a pen as December twenty-fourth - Christmas fucking Eve - about the naked body of a woman identified as Mariana Olivares, found in a dumpster in Queens. It had obviously come from a sidebar on an interior page, with a barely bold, small-point headline because dead prostitutes weren't _news_. The second item pinned to the jacket lapel was the phone number I'd given her. My cell phone.

My hand shook as I tore the paper free. All those wrong numbers . . . "You can't trace a fucking cell phone," I yelled.

"Oh, indeed, I can. It's called Lookup911. Pins you within six feet. Not easy to swing, and costly for me. It took more than a few favors, and a lot of time to be sure I had you, once I knew whose number it was - but worth it. I need to make an example of you, pretty boy. Nobody punks me, and you've been gone since September. It makes others think about trying their luck, starting with that Puerto Rican bitch. The irony is, you've been right under my nose the whole damn time."

He glanced around while I shivered on the rain-soaked carpet, a dead-woman's jacket in my lap. "Pretty little house. That fine face got you some fancy attention, I see, even if there is a mutie or two hanging around."

I wasn't really listening. Instead, I stared at the carpet and wiped blood off my upper lip. This was all my fault. My foolishness. The professor had warned me not to go into the city, but I hadn't listened. And now they were all going to die, these people who'd taken me in; they were going to die because of me. Let no good deed go unpunished.

_Please, God no_, I prayed to the indifferent divinity of my childhood. At least Jean was still hidden under the blankets behind me, not making a sound.

Jack continued to speak while the thunder outside made a strange background. "Which one is your keeper? The winged kid?" He walked over to Warren, who didn't look afraid. He looked furious, even lying helpless on his side. "Do those wings actually work?" Jack asked. Warren didn't deign to reply. "I'd tell Jonah to break them for you, but I'd rather have 'em cut off and mounted for my parlor."

Next, Jack strolled over to where Hank lay beneath the window in the driving pelt of the downpour. The rain had soaked Jack the same as Hank, but he didn't seem to care. He prodded Hank's side. "Or is it big monkey boy, here? Who is he anyway? The heir of this estate? He's ugly enough, but he's got money, and that's all hoes care about - or boys like you."

He turned back to me, crossing broken glass that crunched beneath his heel, then swift as a snake, bent to snatch the blanket off Jean. "Ah. That's what you were hiding." He grabbed her by the hair and dragged her up. Lightning flashed, striking bright off the diamonds in his rings. Jean's face was white and she made no sound, scared mute. But when Jack yanked her head close to kiss her, she came to enough to squirm and shove at him.

He backhanded her hard across the face, knocking her into the television set, which crashed over and broke. Both Warren and I yelled, "Jean!" even as she tried to crawl away. There was blood on her mouth. One of the thugs not standing on Warren casually raised his rifle and sprayed bullets in the floor all around her. She screamed and froze where she was, and my heart almost leapt out of my mouth while she began to sob.

"You bastard," I said. The words were just so much hot air, but I was full of anger. It streamed through me, beat in my chest and spun around in my head, making me dizzy, making me see strange - angled, distorted, sharp at the edges but bleeding all the color out until everything was dun. "You son of a mangy bitch."

Ignoring me, Jack walked over to where the professor lay on his side, and toed his shoulder. "I think this is where I'll start. Charles Xavier, I presume? He hid you from me. How does a cripple like sex, Scotty boy? Did you suck his limp old dick? Or did he suck yours?

"Don't talk about the professor like that," I snarled, standing up. My head was buzzing, as if a dozen bees had been trapped inside it. "You're not fit to lick his asshole clean."

Jack had pulled a pistol out from beneath his white suit jacket. I'd seen it many times while he'd dogged me - had suffered the blunt, black muzzle stroking my cheek, or shoved down my throat until I'd gagged. Now, he set it to the side of Xavier's bald head and panic melted my bones. I sank to my knees again. "Please don't. I'll do whatever you want. I'll go back if you want. Just leave him alone."

"So you love your rich sugar daddy, eh, Scotty?" Smiling, he glanced up at me - and his eyes widened. "What the fuck?"

But it was too late. Vases, lamps, knickknacks, pictures from the wall, the fire irons - all were flying through the air like an animated cavalry of house decor coming over the hill. And Jean wasn't sobbing in terrorized panic. Instead, she stood with hands out, wet hair plastered to her face, her expression contorted by effort. Nor was Hank lying in a crumpled heap beneath the window. He was sailing through the air, feet first, to slam into one of the guards holding down Warren.

It would have been a marvelous trick - I'd never underestimate telepathic Jean again - except Jack still had a gun, and it was aimed at the professor's head. And whatever Jean was throwing at him, he was going to pull the trigger.

_**"NO!"**_

Red light. Piercing, red light exploding out of my _face_, but I could still see perfectly. The red light struck Jack square in the chest with two beams that punched through him like a demolition ball. Bone, lung-matter, and blood sprayed all over the wall behind . . . except there wasn't a wall behind. That was exploding outward, too, in a shatter of brick and wood and plaster, and Jack was falling, red all over his once-white clothes. And I was _glad_. The whole world had gone red, like my rage. I glanced around the room to see Jack's boys ducking from angry sconces and candle holders and an antique cartouche. The red beams followed, striking one of them, separating his head from his shoulders so that his carotid artery sprayed blood up like a fountain. What the hell? I jerked my head around towards another who still had his gun, and the beams dragged across the men's belly, cutting him in half and disintegrating the gun. He barely had time to scream.

I was doing this. Me. These sons of bitches had hurt my friends, threatened them. They'd hurt me, too, and they'd killed Mariana. It was payback time.

I finally felt **powerful**.

But the den walls were blowing out, just like the one behind Jack had, and the roof above us was cracking and groaning even as Warren and Hank both dove to get away from the deadly beams that followed wherever I looked. Red, red, red. Blood red.

I'd just killed three people. Shit, I'd just _killed_ three people. And I couldn't make these beams stop.

_"CLOSE YOUR EYES, SCOTT!"_

Hank's voice.

"What?"

_"CLOSE YOUR EYES!"_

I closed them. I didn't want to see anymore. I didn't want to see the damage I'd caused. Getting to my feet, I stumbled in the general direction of the wall that had been blasted out behind Jack, but tripped on the professor's chair, or what I assumed was his chair. Falling, my hands landed in wet. Rain or blood? But it was thick and sticky and I could feel sharp slivers cut my hands - bits of bone. Struggling back up, I somehow found my way outside through the hole in the wall. Rain beat down on me. I started walking. I had to get away before I killed them all.

I was ruin incarnate.

* * *

><p><strong>Notes:<strong>I owe Domenika for the Columbia info, and Heatherly kindly read through this and offered comments. Jean's class assignment is for the amusement of Naomi and Mara, and the tidbit about Xavier and pizza is courtesy of Andraste. And last, thanks to Gerg for phone tracing info given months ago. The quoted poem, "Costs Plenty," comes from Martin Bell's collection, _Nenshu and the Tiger_.


	9. RoseColored Glasses

I had to get _away_. Get away from what I'd done, get away from anything and anyone else I could hurt, because my whole fucking life, I'd been nothing but a jinx.

That was the only thought in my head as I fled the shattered mansion den. I could barely think at all, in fact, and stumbled about in the rain, sliding on wet, muddy spring grass and driveway gravel, blind and stunned. Once or twice, instinct made me open my eyes as I went crashing to my knees and each time, the same twin red beams lashed out, ripping through whatever lay in front of me**:** grass, gravel, dirt, bushes, trees, the stone wall around the grounds itself . . . it was as if _nothing_ could stop them. Nothing except the fragile skin of my own eyelids.

Terrifying.

But it didn't take me long - even in my stupefied state - to come to three conclusions. First, no matter what, I had to keep my eyes shut. Second, I really was a mutant. And third, I had no place to go.

It was bottomless desperation that kept me walking anyway. Just walking. I wound up in the orchard, tripping over tree roots until, furious and trapped, I sank down on my knees to beat at the loam, digging up clumps of it with my fingers. This was what the fox felt when cornered by baying hounds. My hounds came in the form of police sirens screaming through the night up Greymalkin Lane, and I sure as hell didn't want to get caught. If I were caught, there would be an interrogation, a trial, and probably a shrink or three, then they'd lock me away in some cell to rot.

"Get up and walk, Summers," I told myself. The cops might question Xavier and the rest for a while before coming after me, but come they would, and I had to get somewhere fast. "_Think_." I didn't have time for panic.

The orchard was close to the lake, and chances were the cops didn't have dogs. Even if they did, water killed scent and between the rain and the lake, I had a chance if I could just get to the boathouse dock. I could wade out under it and hide. In the dark, they likely wouldn't see me, and any dogs couldn't smell me. Maybe, if I were lucky, I'd pass out from the cold and drown, and that would solve everyone's problem.

So I headed in what I hoped was the direction of the lake, but I was so utterly disoriented, I had to open my eyes three times, damage be damned, just to get my bearings from a few seconds of sight. The ancient apple trees paid for it. Finally I found the lake, though the skin of my hands and face was cut, and my clothes were soaked and torn. I couldn't hear sirens now, or any sound of pursuit. It was funny how preternatural my hearing had become in half an hour, but all other senses were reaching out, compensating. My nose brought the scent of water and decay and my ears brought the peculiar flat echo of sound off water to my left as I walked along the lake shore, then the distinctive lapping of water against something. I slowed, moving forward with caution, feeling for the foot of the pier by the boathouse. I should be approaching on the far side, and that seemed to be the case when my shoe finally struck wood. Despite my care, I almost stumbled, but still heard no sounds beyond the water lapping and my own breathing, harsh, scared. My hand found the pier rail, just enough for direction, then I waded out into the water before turning to find my way beneath the walk. In the night and the rain, everything was uniformly dark, but I could sense the enclosed space, smell rotting wood, and feel the cobwebs that clung to my fingers. I made a startled, disgusted noise, shoving my hand under water to wipe them off on my jeans. I hate spiders - creepy, crawly things. There were goddamn _spiders_ under the pier and it made me shudder. "Stay away from me, Charlotte," I whispered.

Then I tried to hunker down and be quiet. The water was freezing and before long, my teeth were chattering. I still heard nothing, but I couldn't believe they'd let me get away. I'd just killed three people and wrecked a man's historic, family mansion, plus I was the reason Jack Winters had come there in the first place. No way would anyone help me after this. I'd never really grasped why Xavier was helping me in the first place, and now, I'd nearly caused his death. Let a snake into the house and eventually it bit you. I could have told him that six months ago, but I'd been too . . . too what? Selfish? Bent on my own survival? Survival had become a habit, like the words I'd memorized from _Angels in America_: "_Death usually has to take life away. I don't know if that's just the animal. I don't know if it's not braver to die. But I recognize the habit. The addiction to being alive. We live past hope._"

I'd lived past hope. Or maybe, in these past six months, the desire really to _live_ had finally granted me the courage actually to die. People on the street survived; they didn't live. I'd learned - just a little - how to live. And it seemed to me, in that moment, that my death was the best thing I could give the people who'd done so much for me.

And I wasn't afraid.

The shaking had become so bad, I could feel my muscles spasming. _Let it go, let it go, let it go . . . _If I could just slide down under the surface, too cold to resist and too rigid to fight to breathe, that would be the end of it. I'd never hurt anyone again. I'd never hurt again. _Let it go . . . _

**_Don't you dare!_ **

The voice in my mind and it wasn't my own. It startled me so much I made some squeak, like a mouse.

_Dammit! Don't you dare give up on us, Scott Summers!_

The words were full of a fear and anguish as great as my own, but distinctly not mine. Rage, too, but a rage born out of dismay. And now I could hear the sound of someone moving out of the orchard trees and down the path at a run. Just one person, loud. No dogs. _Where are you, you stubborn son of a bitch? _

Who _are you? _

_JEAN! Who'd you think it was? _

Yes, of course. I should have recognized her mental signature but hadn't often felt her mind - she was scrupulous in her respect of other's mental privacy - yet it was her impatience, her irritation, and beneath, her innate warmth that had always drawn me like a moth against my will. I hadn't wanted to like her, but she'd made me. And now, I didn't want to reveal myself, but the force of her concern made me. "Here," I said aloud. My voice sounded funny to my own ears.

Her feet drummed on the pier overhead. "You're _in the water_? You _idiot_! Get out of there right now!" Then to my astonishment, I heard her leap off the pier into the lake, cursing the cold as she waded beneath the pier to pull me out bodily. "Do you want to catch your death? It's freezing!"

And then . . . something. Some hint she caught fluttering in my mind, and she just stopped. "My God," she said. "You were. That's what you meant to do. Die." And, in a softer voice, almost broken, "How _could_ you?"

"How could I _not_? I just fucking _killed_ three people, Jean! I fucked up! I fucked up so bad I almost got all of you killed! Just leave me the hell alone - it's better this way!"

Heartbeats of silence, stretching out, then she was yanking me off balance and out from under the pier. I could hear her sobbing, but also cursing through chattering teeth, "_Fuck, fuck, fuck! _You goddamn stupid little shit! I _refuse_ to let you die just because you think it's convenient." She was like a force of nature, and all I could do was follow as she hauled me towards the shore, half by her grip on my arm, half by her telekinesis. I was reminded of the whirlwind she'd created with her powers in the den, in defense of us all. Never underestimate Jean Grey.

"The cops - "

"The professor's taking care of that. You shut up." She was still crying - I could hear it in her voice - and she was hauling me somewhere. Then I tripped - on a rock or a root - and fell. She was immediately at my side, helping me to stand, wrapping one arm about my waist and stroking my hair with her free hand. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. I've got you, okay? Do you trust me?"

"Do I have a choice?"

"Yes, Scott - you do." The hand was still stroking my wet hair. "I'm furious at you - you scared us to death - but yes, you have a choice. Do you trust me?"

The words surprised me, but I answered, "Yeah." And I did trust her. And suddenly . . . I could see.

It wasn't my own vision. For one thing, I was seeing _myself_ in the dark - sopping wet, bruised in the face, eyes squeezed shut in panicked desperation, and very, very pale from the chilled lake water. "Wow," I whispered, amazed despite everything.

"I'm taking you to the lake house."

"Aren't the cops after me?"

"No. I told you, you don't need to worry about that."

"But how - "

"Don't ask questions. Just let me get you there." And hauling me up, she led me the rest of the way, propelling me through the door of the boathouse.

When I'd first heard the term 'boat house,' my working-class background had assumed it to be a machine shed for engine and equipment storage. But it's a _house_, or cabin, really. Once, a butler or groundskeeper might have lived there, but these days, guests used it, the decor woodsy-rustic with exposed ceiling beams, dark paneling and wooden pillars, a red brick fireplace, lattice windows and comfortable furniture. Upstairs were two bedrooms and a bath, and downstairs, a modern kitchen and a dining nook off the living room. Because it used pillars instead of walls to separate areas, the open space made it seem larger than it was.

It was a bit dizzying to see out of her eyes, but so much better than being blind. I hadn't realized just how much sightlessness had contributed to my panic, but with the solid feel of her grip around my waist, her body heat, and her vision, my terror eased and adrenaline faded. I was very, very tired, and still so cold my tremors were a constant thing, making my muscles ache. Jean sat me down on a footstool by the fireplace and said, "Don't move," then (gently) broke the mental link and my world went black again. "I'll be right back, okay?" Her hands withdrew and I listened to the sound of her moving about the bottom floor, then up the stairs, the creak of steps overhead, and back down. A soft fleece blanket was dropped around my shoulders, very big. "Get out of your clothes, Scott, and wrap up in the blanket. Drop the wet stuff on the carpet and I'll take care of it. Then I want you to go lay down on the couch. It's right behind you, about two feet. I won't be watching you undress. I'm going to find some wood for the fireplace."

I could have cared less if she was watching, and grabbed for her arm, caught it more by chance than design. "Your clothes are wet, too." But what I meant was, _I'm scared. Don't leave me. _

She laid a hand over mine. "Don't you worry about me. I need to get a fire started, then find some food. I looked for clothes but couldn't find anything besides spare socks." She seemed amused by this. "But I was in a hurry, so I'll check again. There are lots of blankets, so we'll be fine, just not fit for a Paris runway."

"Thank you," I whispered.

"Don't worry about it." Then to my surprise, she bent and kissed me on the cheek. "Everything's going to work out. You'll see."

I almost laughed at that. She was either crazy or as naïve as a newborn kitten. And why was she here? What had I ever done to deserve her protection, or her care? To deserve anyone's? Hadn't she realized what I'd been and what I was? Could I still get away when she wasn't looking?

Not damn likely. She'd found me with her telepathy once - she could do it again. I felt as trapped by that as by the cops back at the mansion, and it mutated my relief and gratitude into anger and resentment. I couldn't leave, so I did the only thing I could do**:** refuse to comply. I sat on the rug in my wet clothes and my darkness and clenched my teeth, trying to stop my shaking. Even my body wouldn't obey me.

She came back after a while. Without vision, time seemed to stretch. I heard the door open again and the smell of rain and the lake, then the clatter of logs in the hearth and her voice. "Scott? What's wrong? Why didn't you get out of those clothes?"

"Why do you fucking care?" I snarled back.

Silence, then she knelt down in front of me and her hand touched my face. I jerked back. "Scott? What is it?"

"Why won't you leave me _alone_? Why do you think you have to _save_ me? Maybe I damn well don't want 'saved,' okay?" And I was reminded of the guy in the silver jaguar, who'd once told me that he saved people like me, all while he lay naked in bed after I'd blown him. 'Save' me, indeed. "I'm not your fucking toy," I told Jean now. "Or your goddamn 'project.' I don't need your pity."

I'd half expected her to yell at me again, or slap me, or even to cry, but she remained silent. Finally, she asked, "Do you really want to be left alone? Or are you just scared?"

"Don't play the shrink; you're no good at it." I wanted to make her mad. I wanted to make her go away. "You're just a pampered little upper class bitch who thinks she's Mother Teresa."

"And don't you play the bastard; _you're_ no good at it." But she sounded amused instead of hurt, and that just made me angrier.

"I'm not fucking around! Get the hell away from me! I never liked you from the first time I laid eyes on you!"

She sighed. "Scott, quit trying to lie to a telepath. I thought you had better sense than that."

Her words stopped me cold, and I hissed, "_Stay the fuck out of my head!_"

"I'm not _in_ your head. But I can still tell a lie. You're scared to death." Abruptly, I felt her grab my hand, hers atop the blanket, mine beneath, and I was glad for that thin skin of cloth insulating me. "I'm your friend, Scott. Nothing is going to change that."

"You don't fucking know me!" I pulled my hand free.

"Oh, yes, I do."

"No, you don't! You don't know anything about me! You don't know who I was!"

"I know who you are."

"Yeah, right!"

She gripped my chin with her other hand and for the first time, an edge of irritation entered her voice. "Quit arguing for half a minute, would you? _I know you. _Underneath all that bravado, you're the kindest person I've ever met. The house cats follow you around, and I see you with the horses - how you take care of them. You feed the birds, and the squirrels, too, and I remember the time you made Warren stop the Boxter, so you could move a turtle off the road. I see all the little things you do - pick up after the rest of us, keep the floors clear for Charles's chair, bring Henry food when he forgets to eat down in the lab - put more Coke in the fridge . . . You thank the cook for making you dinner, and the maid for cleaning your room. The rest of us, we take it all for granted. You don't. You _notice_ things, and I admire you so much for that."

Embarrassed and a little humiliated, I struggled to answer, and finally said, "I'm just trying to pull my weight. It's not like I've got anything else to give, no money, nothing of value. How can I pay back the professor except to do stuff? I'm not worth anything."

And then she did cry. She hadn't cried when I'd insulted her, but now she cried. I wanted to ask what was wrong, but I was already confused enough. After a minute, she moved a little closer to me, pulling my head onto her shoulder, the blanket still between us. I wanted to resist, but was so tired, and still so very cold. She was warm. She just held me, patting my back. "Listen to me. You _are_ worth something. The professor loves you, Scott. I think he cares about every student he's ever had, but you - you're special. You're special to me, too."

Her words bowled me over. "Why? Why do any of you care?" I whispered. "You don't know what I was."

"You keep saying that like it matters."

"It does."

"No, it doesn't. And you're wrong, too. I do know. It still doesn't matter." Her hand moved from my back to my hair. "I had to ask Warren what a 'peach boy' was."

I froze.

"Stupid name," she continued. "But yes, I know."

I couldn't move. I thought I might die of shame.

"It makes me so mad, I want to scream. I want to go out and hit something. But it doesn't change our friendship - except to make me realize you're stronger and braver than I ever knew."

Hope beat wings against my ribcage, as if trapped inside Pandora's box. But I've often wondered, is Hope an amelioration, or the greatest evil of all, teasing us with impossible possibility? "Please don't mock me," I begged.

"Never." she replied.

"I don't know if I can trust anymore. I'm so tired, Jean."

"I know." She was still stroking my hair. "How about if we make a deal? Trust me just a little -enough to take care of you tonight. Can you trust me that far? I won't let you down."

I thought about it, finally said, "Okay."

So Jean undressed me down to my skivvies, her touch as impersonal as the doctor she wanted to be someday. Then she wrapped me in a second, drier blanket and went about lighting the fireplace. She found food, too. I hadn't realized I was hungry until she brought me some crackers and cheese, and a glass of apple juice.

She also fashioned a makeshift blindfold. "You're making your face muscles tired from squeezing your eyes shut, Scott."

"I don't know if I can keep them shut otherwise. I can feel the . . . whatever they are . . . _pushing_."

"I think I know something to take care of that." And she disappeared, returning a few minutes later to lay a heavy weight across my eyes. It smelled wonderful, sharp and cool with flax seed. "I saw this upstairs when I was looking for blankets and clothes. It's one of those eye pillows you see advertised." The 'pillow' was heavy and helped hold the eyelids shut. She bound it in place with a second tie. "That should hold it. Now, will you try to get some sleep?"

"What time is it?"

"Almost four in the morning."

And the cops still hadn't come for me. "What happened, up at the mansion? Is the professor okay?" It was the first time I'd thought to ask.

"Charles is fine. He came to not long after you ran off and sent me after you. Then he called the police."

"What's he going to tell them?" There were at least three dead bodies in the mansion den.

"I don't know what he told them, but I don't want you to worry about it. It's being taken care of."

"That was before the police got there."

"No, Scott. I'm a telepath, remember? And so is he. He knows where we are, and that you're safe. He was so very worried about you. He wants us to stay here and sleep. He'll see us in the morning. You have _nothing_ to worry about." And she led me upstairs, helped me into a bed, and tucked me in as if I were her child. She even rubbed my back. But it reminded me of touches I'd rather forget, and after a minute or so, she registered that I'd tensed up. Letting her hand fall away, self-conscious, she muttered, "Sorry."

"It's okay," I said, embarrassed to have embarrassed her.

But I had a hard time sleeping. Whether or not I had to worry about the police, that didn't change the fact that I'd killed three people tonight. Yes, I'd hated them. Yes, they'd hurt me, and had been trying to kill me and my own. And yes, I'd probably do it again to save the others. But dead is dead, and a body without a head is a horrible thing. So is a body cut in half. I'd done that, and the weapon had come from inside myself.

_I_ was the weapon. _I_ had killed. After everything I'd done in my life, every way I'd been used as a sex toy, nothing had polluted me like that. I would never be the same.

* * *

><p>Parts of the next few weeks, I have no memory of, just as there are parts of my time on the street that are simply erased. But in this case, it was the uncertainty of blindness and a powerful grief that rendered me insensible. Who had mourned for the dead Mariana, I wondered? Had anyone missed her? Was she buried in a pauper's grave? Even the knowledge that I'd killed the man who'd killed her didn't help. The death of Jack couldn't resurrect my friend; it only made me a murderer on top of being a whore. Some days, I simply didn't get out of bed, having no energy to face the chore of making my way around blind, and I ate little. It was easier to sleep, or at least to vegetate. I listened to the noise of reconstruction downstairs, the buzz of saws, the pound of hammers, repairing the damage I'd caused.<p>

To this day, I don't know how Xavier kept me from being arrested, how the bodies were explained, or what became of the four goons who'd survived. I've never asked, either; I don't want to know. It was nebulous, and I was content with that. True to the promise Jean had given me, Xavier protected me, probably through highly illegal means. But the law isn't always about justice; it's about the law. I suspect that a few cops had their heads messed with, a few were lied to outright, and a few knew the truth but kept their own counsel, glad to be rid of the burden of Jack O' Diamonds. That his death would almost surely instigate internecine gang warfare among his lieutenants . . . well, that was the way of the streets. But the new alpha wolf would be weaker, with less influence and fewer contacts, and the police were happy with that. Sometimes, one must settle for the best one can hope for.

That was the lesson I was learning. The best I could hope for.

Xavier had hoped that my manifestation would be a cause for celebration. I learned many years later that he'd had a private dream all his life of making the manifestation experience of at least one child a time of joy and fulfillment, not fear and uncertainty and self-loathing. He'd planned to throw me a _party_. But no one had anticipated the fatal devastation of my power's genesis. I suppose, in a perverse way, I was lucky. Given my dicey mood at the time, I could just as easily have blown my top at Jean, or Warren, or Hank, or even the professor, and my power might have manifested against one of _them_. That, I couldn't have borne.

I was the first energy converter Xavier had ever seen. Erik Lehnsherr manipulated magnetic energy, but didn't convert it. Hank and Warren had physical mutations, and Jean's was like Xavier's - psionic. But my body was one giant solar battery. Apparently, I have a tertiary system right alongside my circulatory and limbic systems that absorbs solar radiation through my skin, then conducts it to part of my brain that converts it into concussive force that's emitted back out through my optic pathways. Why the eyes, I have no idea, though I suppose if mine worked right, it'd target and fire instantaneously, with no need for eye-to-hand coordination.

But of course, it doesn't work right.

None of us knew that then, and almost the first words Xavier said to me on the morning after I'd blown up his mansion den were words of reassurance, not rebuke. "Most young mutants have to learn to control their powers, Scott. Warren couldn't immediately fly, Hank couldn't immediately climb walls, Jean couldn't immediately control either her telepathic shields or her telekinesis. But they learned. In my experience, just as babies are born with an instinct to pull up, to crawl, and then to walk, so each mutant is born instinctually knowing the proper way to manage his or her powers. You'll have to trust yourself."

But two weeks later, the news was different. It took that long, and that many failed attempts by me to command the beams, to reach the conclusion that there was something seriously wrong. My old medical file, sent by Children's Hospital in Omaha - where I'd spent five months in a coma after the accident that had orphaned me - only confirmed what they'd begun to suspect.

It was a Thursday afternoon in mid-April, and I could hear the sound of rain striking my window. April showers bring May flowers, but I was beginning to fear I'd never see them. Xavier came motoring into my room where I lay alone on my bed as I often did, listening to music. Music had replaced books. Though Jean and Warren read to me sometimes, Jean was still in class and Warren had other things to do than entertain me. I had my CD collection. I'd come up with a marking system on the jewel case spines that let me sort them according to type, and with Warren's help, we'd alphabetized those. I had a good memory for what I had, but it still often took three tries before finding the one I was after. Strangely, I resisted audio books, as if borrowing them from the library would be an admission that this state wasn't temporary.

Now, I could hear the whine of the professor's chair even over the earphones. I'd become extremely sensitive to sound and the disturbances of air in a room. It was hard to surprise me, blinded or not, and I removed the earphones, sitting up and turning my face in his general direction. The professor rarely came to my room, so I figured he had important news, but he began with small talk. "What are you listening to?"

"Bimbetta - _The War of Love_." Despite the group name and album title, the music had been composed by Frescobaldi, Purcell and Monteverdi. Hank's fault. I'd never like his opera, and composers such as Wagner and Tchaikovsky drove me insane with their bombastic style, but I'd discovered that I enjoyed early modern and baroque very much - the clarity of it. It pierced my soul in a way that later classical music didn't.

"Have you ever considered joining a chamber ensemble, Scott?"

"_Me?" _The idea struck me as absurd. "What for?"

"Every now and then, I've had the pleasure of hearing you sing to yourself in the kitchen. You have a fine ear and nice tenor."

That embarrassed me. I hadn't been aware that anyone had been listening. "I can't read music," I blurted. "Not that it matters now."

Normally when I made remarks like that, Xavier would admonish me with, "It's just a matter of time until you learn to master it." That afternoon, he didn't. Instead, he moved his chair closer and I felt his hand rest on my knee. In another place and time, I might have construed it as a come-on. "Henry is finally finished with his comparisons of your old medical charts to what data we can glean now."

Xavier's tone told me that whatever they'd found wasn't good news. "Apparently, your effect on medical equipment isn't new." All those fancy machines in the medbay didn't like my body much. X-Rays came back entirely white; MRIs and CAT scans were nearly indecipherable. "But the effect seems to have been intermittent when you were younger, so they did have several brain scans. You suffered severe injuries in the fall from the plane**:** multiple pelvic fractures, two broken legs and one broken arm, plus internal injuries - it's a miracle your back wasn't broken. You also had fractures to both shoulder blades and the rear of your skull."

All the damage he listed was old news. Involuntarily, I touched a spot behind my ear where one of the scars lay from the holes they'd been forced to drill to relieve the pressure on my bruised and swelling brain. I'd always worn my hair longer to cover them.

"It seems the severe concussion that partly accounts for your lengthy period of convalescence did damage to the occipital lobes of your cerebrum. One of the doctors even wrote in your chart at the time that if you did regain consciousness, it was possible you'd suffer from vision problems or reading-related dyslexia of one stripe or another."

That, I'd never been told. "My sight's always been fine. Better than fine. Except for the sun headaches - but that's new. And I've never had trouble reading." That was an understatement.

"Yet the damage is clear, according to Henry." Xavier hesitated, then said, "He thinks the damaged part of your brain isn't the part that controls sight or reading comprehension, but the part that would have controlled your mutant power."

He stopped, but it took a moment for the import of his words to register. "You mean I _can't_ control it?"

"We're beginning to fear that's the case. As you know, scans of your cranial area are only nominally useful, but the MRI, at least, gives enough data that Henry can pinpoint the damaged section when he compares it to MRIs made at Children's Hospital nine years ago. It does show up a different color, which seems to reflect less activity."

"It's dead, you mean."

"Not dead, merely damaged. Obviously, part of the area still functions, or your mutation would never have manifested at all."

I pulled in my legs against my body and wrapped my arms around them, chin on knees. I didn't say anything for a while and Xavier didn't press me. "So what does that mean?" I asked finally. "I'm going to be blind forever?" Or effectively blind, as my sight destroyed whatever I looked at. For the past two weeks, uncertainty had driven me into increasing depression, but now I had the very truth I'd feared the most. "I _hate_ it," I said now, ready to scream with rage, though I refused to lose control like that. "I _hate_ being helpless like this!"

"I know." Xavier's voice was soft and I could hear him shift in his chair; that gave me pause. If anyone at the mansion understood what it was like to be told 'never again,' it was the professor.

"How do you stand it?"

He seemed to follow what I was asking, but then, of course he would. "Time," he replied, his voice gentle. "You adjust, relearn . . . But Scott, it's still very early. We've only just isolated the problem, and there may yet be a way around this. Please do not give up hope."

Unsure of what to think, I pressed one hand over the blindfold secured across my eyes, there to help hold them shut as much as to remind me not to open them. Fear suddenly filled me. "What'll happen if there's no way around it? Can you sew my eyes closed? Or just take them out?" Could they even do that without my blasting through the medlab roof?

"Absolutely not!" Xavier's tone was shocked and - I could tell - deeply upset. "I would never permit you to be mutilated, Scott. We can't know what the future will bring. I don't want you even to think about damaging your eyes permanently. Promise me that you'll attempt nothing drastic."

The emphatic nature of Xavier's concern took me by surprise, but I said, "Okay," intentionally vague about what I was agreeing to.

He left me then, and I lay down, sleeping through until early afternoon the next day. Once, Warren came by to sit with me a while, though he said nothing. I was too depressed even to cry, but his presence was the bulwark that I'd come to associate with him.

Deprived of sight, I'd developed new ways to see my friends. Warren had become the wall that enclosed and protected me, just as he did sometimes with his wings. He was scrupulously careful when I went walking with him, warning me of everything in subtle ways that spared my dignity; accidents rarely happened with Warren, and the few times he failed to warn me fast enough, or I failed to listen, one of those great wings would snap out to brace me or keep me from jeopardy. That, I thought, was Warren's nature. Maybe he'd taken the whole 'guardian angel' thing to heart, but it was just the foundation of his personality. He was a protector, a defender of those weaker than him. He embodied the absolute best of the old aristocratic ideal of social obligation. With power and resources came responsibility.

Hank was my educator, now no less than before. If the professor taught my classes, Hank taught me that the heart of learning is a spirit of adventure. For him, there truly were no stupid questions except the one that went unasked, and if he sometimes seemed childlike, it was because he'd never fallen into the sin of a cultivated apathy. From Hank I learned to enjoy life, whether sighted or blind.

One day while running errands for the professor (an attempt both to get me out of the mansion and to force me to function blind in public), Hank had pulled off the highway unexpectedly, parked the car, and led me across a field. I wasn't at all sure where we were beyond someplace with a lot of squealing kids. Then he'd halted, took away my cane, and placed my hands on a set of what turned out to be monkey bars. "Climb, Scott."

"I can't fucking _see_!" I'd snapped back.

"You don't need to see, you only need to feel. I won't let you fall." And he hadn't. By the end of the afternoon, I'd been on every toy the yard had to offer and had even caught myself laughing a time or three. What the children thought of two grown (or nearly grown) men playing on monkey bars and slides, I have no idea, but no one said anything to us.

Thus, when a few days later Hank arrived at my room with a handbook for Braille, braille flashcards, a braille keyboard and voice recognition software for my (unused for four weeks) computer, I didn't snap his head off. "You love to read, Scott. There is absolutely no reason to deprive yourself of that joy." Other things Hank brought included a currency scanner, a talking calculator, and a hinged-face pocket watch for telling time by touch. So I sat down that evening and began to memorize letters. When I got my sight back a month later, I kept it up anyway. Today, I read American Literary Braille fluently, and still use a braille keyboard. It's not an affectation. I'm at the mercy of my glasses or visor; without them, I am blind. And I refuse to be helpless. Besides, by the end of the day, their weight can give me a headache. It's a relief to take them off and read a book by touch.

Touch. What the blind can't do without, and what I had the most difficulty accepting. If Warren was my bulwark, and Hank my teacher, then Jean became my open door. It had been Jean who'd come after me that first night in the rain, who'd dragged me bodily back to land, and who, even before that, had taught me to accept a touch or embrace without flinching. She still touched me afterward, despite what she'd learned of my past, as if she knew how much I needed the reassurance of human contact. There was an added benefit - when she was touching me, I could see. It proved, however, to be a double-edged sword. When I saw, I saw through her eyes, not my own, and the result was a tendency to misjudge distance. I ran into things. With more time, I might have learned to adjust, but Jean could only visit on weekends and about a month into my blindness, I realized that it was neither fair to be her visual parasite, nor useful. It only fostered dependence, which I despised. So I told her that I'd accept the gift of sight only occasionally. She didn't press the matter, but when she was around me, she was always touching me.

And thus I didn't associate Jean with sight, but with the warmth of skin and an enthusiastic grip. She grounded me, dragged me back to the shore of social companionship. I wasn't an island in a blind lake. Strangers who saw us probably assumed we were lovers, but it was never that kind of touch, not then, though I have no doubt that my complete ease with the feel of her body bled later into the sexual, not merely the sensual. At that point, she was simply my door. I passed through her back into the human race.

* * *

><p>For convenience, I say I was blind for two months. In fact, I was blind for seventy-one days. I lost my sight about midnight on March 29th and regained it fully on June 8th. But the process started weeks before that, and like most important discoveries, it happened quite by accident.<p>

'Try it again, Scott.' 'Concentrate, Scott.' 'Isolate the feel of the beams themselves.' 'Experiment with contracting and releasing the muscles of your eyes.' Probably all good advice, if things had worked right, which we eventually discovered they didn't. In those first weeks, I tore up a lot of lawn, a few trees, and probably confused a number of locals with the 'laser show' in the sky up at Xavier's estate. The difficulty with learning to control my powers (even if they _had_ worked right), lay in their sheer destructiveness. I could dig a twenty-foot trench in seconds, and seconds isn't long if it's all new and you're trying to get a sense of how it feels. Aiming at the sky gave me more time, but I couldn't really determine relative force because the beams weren't striking anything (we hoped). The end result was that I usually stormed off inside half an hour, upset and frustrated past bearing. I was a walking weapon, my body good for nothing except destruction. It was hardly the mutant gift I'd have chosen. Warren got to fly. I got to punch holes in things.

About four weeks after my beams first manifested, Hank and the professor took me out to a corner of the estate that sported a shallow cliff of exposed granite, hoping that by trying my beams against such hard rock, I'd have more time to feel them. The professor still thought my lack of control might be 'mutant dyslexia' rather than an entirely dysfunctional 'on-off' switch. (It isn't.) And Hank was trying to discover if the density of an object had any containment effect. (It doesn't.) They'd had no idea just _how_ much force the beams wielded, but when I drilled a hole twenty-five feet deep in the side of that cliff in ten seconds, they realized my 'optic blast' was a whole order of magnitude stronger than they'd thought. They also made a startling discovery.

The igneous granite had been riddled with veins of brown tourmaline and one massive deposit of SiO 2 - silicon dioxide, or quartz. In this case, _rose_ quartz, common to New York and Connecticut. The hole I'd made was clean-drilled, slicing through both granite and tourmaline, but leaving half-exposed that clump of raw, glittering, tectosilicate pink.

Rose quartz is my friend, so I've read a lot about it. The name comes from the Saxon word _querklufterz_, and the mineral has traditionally symbolized love and beauty. Romans believed it to be a fertility aid, it's the gemstone of the zodiac sign Libra, and South Dakota's official stone. Yet in terms of geology, it's . . . quirky. First, unlike all other forms of quartz, it rarely occurs in hexagonal prisms, only massive chunks. There's no scientific reason for this. Second, no one is entirely certain what gives it the distinct color. Mineral impurities, yes, but _what_ impurities? Iron and titanium used to be thought the culprits, but more recent X-ray defraction tests suggest it's a previously unknown fibrous mineral related to dumortierite.

Whatever it is, it likes me, or my beams like it. A few more tests were conducted before they said anything, but on the five-week anniversary of my manifestation, Hank called me outside, sat me in a chair and told me to open my eyes. Still docile in my depression and used by now to being a guinea pig, I complied.

In front of me, I saw a wall of pink as the beams lanced out. They struck the wall - and _disappeared_.

It startled me so much, I jumped to my feet, knocking the chair over backwards and blasting part of the lawn before I snapped my eyes shut. "What the hell just happened? What _is_ that stuff?"

"Rose quartz," Hank said, sounding very pleased with himself as he righted the chair and guided me back down into it.

"Is it still in front of me?"

"Yes."

I opened my eyes again to the same astonishing result. The beams disappeared into the crystal - mostly. A bit leaked around the edges, and I asked, "Are you sure this is safe?"

"As long as you don't shift your head much, we should be fine. Move in closer. I want to see the approximate width of the beams at close proximity." He didn't explain why and I was still too amazed to ask, just pressed my nose to the quartz. It was the gemmy kind, milky and opaque, like looking into a pink cloud. I could pick out the threads of it, capillaries under fair stone skin, and caught Hank in my peripheral vision moving about beside me, taking careful measurements with calipers. Everything was tinted red, but what I noticed most was the sensation of the beams releasing. Before, the longest I'd held my eyes open had been 20-30 seconds, but now, almost a full minute had passed and the sensation had gone from a sudden thrust to a steady pressure, not at all painful. Vaguely erotic, in fact. It had given me a partial hard-on and realizing what was happening, I shut my eyes.

"What's wrong?" Hank asked. "I wasn't quite finished."

"Sorry." I swallowed and concentrated, trying to make the erection go away, but of course, and perversely, concentrating only made it worse. One's mutant gift wasn't supposed to be a turn-on, was it? But the unexpected power of it, pouring out of me, felt bright like ejaculation.

I opened my eyes again and concentrated on feeling the beams. I could master this. My body didn't rule me, dammit. After a few moments, the sensation faded into physical background noise. Hank finished his calibrations and the blindfold went on again.

Thus began steady days of experimentation. Having something positive to concentrate on, I could drag myself out of bed in the morning. (Well, late morning.) I didn't want to think about my present blindness, my unsavory past, or dead people - Mariana, Jack . . . my family. I only wanted to think about rocks. Hard, crystalline, impassive rocks.

Henry hallowed out a practice mask for me from the rose quartz I'd accidentally excavated from the hillside. The whole block had been ten inches by twelve, exceptionally large. He created a shallow bowl that curved over my face from chin to forehead and around to my ears. I had to hold it there, and it was heavy, but it gave me something to work against that didn't explode. I found that if I couldn't shut off the beams, I _could_ control the power of their impact by pushing or relaxing, and I could vary their size by widening or narrowing my eyes. As we moved the mask closer to and away from my face, we could measure the beams' dispersion and project the width of the ray. Using the left-over quartz, Henry also began testing how thin the sample could be before it cracked under impact, and determined the effects of varying the aperture in the quartz. If the slit were long and narrow enough, the beams were pushed together until they made a single blast. I wasn't sure what the point of all that was, but Hank was about six steps ahead of me.

Experimentation proved that any type of rose quartz was resistant, but the thickness required to block the beams before the sample shattered depended on its impurity level - suggesting it was the mysterious 'something' in rose silicon dioxide that absorbed my power.

In short, the darker the gemstone, the thinner it could be.

That presented a problem. Unlike other varieties of quartz, high-grade transparent rose crystal is damn _rare_, and most comes from Brazil. It's pale, too, with fewer impurities, and thus, less resistance. No piece of natural transparent stone is strong enough to withstand my beams, yet still be thin enough that I could see through it. Hank's solution? A synthetic. Synthetics, like cultured pearls, are real, just artificially created. The quartz used for my visors and glasses is lab grown, stabilized, and then enhanced by irradiation - creating perfect, flawless crystals with a high level of mineral impurity, making it deep pink. Hank calls it 'ruby quartz.'

I remained intensely interested in the entire process, as it gave me something intellectual to latch onto, a raft in an emotional sea. I'd been drifting. Even so, science isn't a steady march forward. For every breakthrough that Hank made, he ran into another problem, yet he was determined to find a way for me to see again and spent hours in his lab, even though he was also juggling residency rotations. "Why are you doing this?" I asked him once. "I got you shot, almost killed."

"Don't be ridiculous. The bullet merely grazed my shoulder. And _you_ did nothing." I could hear his motion cease. He'd been polishing yet another stone. "Listen to me - you must cease to blame yourself for the actions of a hardened criminal, Scott. Yes, perhaps you erred in returning to visit your old roommate." By now, they all knew how Jack had gotten my cell number. "But it _was_ an error, and a _compassionate_ error, at that. Would that all of us made mistakes of that kind. Let blame fall on the right shoulders - and they aren't yours."

I heard him out, but maintained my doubts. Instead, I said, "That still doesn't explain why you're helping me. Every spare hour you don't spent at the hospital, you're down here playing mad alchemist."

I could hear the smile in his voice. "I delight in a challenge, and this is a massive challenge." Then he grew serious. "But more than that, you belong to this little mutant family, Scott. Your burden is my burden, and in this case, it's a burden I can do something about. So I am."

I pondered that, remembering what Jean had said to me on the night she'd come after me - that she admired how I noticed and did things for people. I'd replied that it was all I had to offer. And it was - but I'd been looking at it wrong, as a payment, not a gift. We each had something to give. Mine was noticing things. That encompassed who I _was_, though I'd never thought of myself in those terms. Always before I'd been an orphan, a runaway, a street-kid, a hustler . . . a problem. But I was also a shepherd of sorts, an organizer, and - if Xavier could be believed - a budding tactician. I saw patterns in things, how they held together, and what was required to make them work. Hank's gift was ingenuity, Warren's was compassion, Jean's was enthusiasm, Xavier's was vision, but I was the glue that held them all together.

I liked that thought a lot better than being a whore.

Three days later, Hank caught me in the kitchen on a Sunday morning. It was brunch; Warren, Jean and I were quarreling over whether pancake syrup should be hot or cold (surely a topic of epic importance), when Hank burst through the door, shouting, "_Eureka!_"

"Whathefuck . . .?" I heard a loud clatter as something fell. "Don't scare the shit out of me like that!" Warren snapped, presumably at Hank.

"What is it?" I asked, frustrated yet again at my blindness.

"War dropped his plate of pancakes," Jean explained

"Forget the pancakes!" I heard Hank bound over to undo my blindfold and put something else on my face instead. It was heavy and cold, like metal, and it fit snug over my ears and across the bridge of my nose. "Wholah! Open your eyes, Scott!"

"Are you fucking crazy? Not in the house!" I'd been through a couple of Hank's experiments before, enough to be cautious.

"Okay, so let's go outside."

"Shouldn't the professor be here?" Jean asked.

"I don't know -" I began even as Hank said, "Yes, yes!"

So Xavier was summoned from where he'd been taking quiet time in his office, and we all exited the kitchen's servant door, Jean guiding me by the elbow. I tried not to think while we trooped out onto the lawn beyond the herb garden. This would probably be another failure; no reason to get my hopes up. When we stopped, Hank said, "Open your eyes, Scott!" And cautiously, I cracked them a little inside the new contraption on my face. Nothing happened. No exploding quartz, no deadly optic blasts.

It was marvelous.

Everything was red and distorted and dark, even outside at near noon, and the visor itself lay heavy and uncomfortable on my face. But it was marvelous. After months of blindness, the power of vision felled me.

Dropping to my knees, I whispered, "I can see."

* * *

><p><strong>Notes:<strong> Thanks to Cyclops&Phoenix, especially Lelia and Naomi, for a long-ago discussion of Scott's injuries and the discovery of his glasses. Bimbetta is "a blend of cabaret, Commedia Dell'Arte, and _MTV Unplugged._"


	10. The Approach of the Approach of Splendor

It's a mystery to me, how the heart works. One minute, you feel nothing. The next, you feel everything; it boils up like magma, just seeking a crack in the surface.

Wednesday afternoon, June 22nd . . . the wind off Breakstone Lake brought the stink of fish and decaying cattails that choked the water's edge, their long leaves rasping in the wind. A red-winged blackbird exploded from the foliage, skimming the water's surface across to the other shore. Gnats swarmed and the deck wood burned the soles of my bare feet. I sat halfway down the pier with my knees up and arms around them, just looking out at the water. Sunlight scattered across the lake, glinting bright enough to make me squint even behind ruby quartz. But it was all red, not gold.

Everything was red. Hank said it wasn't the quartz. If it were just the quartz, my brain would have adjusted to filter it out, returning the world to normal shades. But all I saw now came in red and black and gray. Two weeks, and I so _missed_ green and blue, yellow and white and simple brown. It had become an ache.

_But you can see._

After weeks - months - of blindness, sight itself was a miracle, and it seemed ungrateful to resent that. If the cost was color, who was I to complain? When I felt pity for myself, I simply recalled where I'd been, only a year before, or that millions of people in the world still lived worse off than me. Would a starving man give up colors for certain knowledge that he'd have enough to eat? Or a lonely man, for the touch of a friend's hand?

I was lucky. I was insanely lucky, and to weep for lost colors seemed petty beyond bearing.

And yet, and yet . . . The losses kept piling up and I wondered if loss would become the stick by which I measured my life, or what was left of it. It had been two weeks since I'd regained my sight, and shouldn't I be thankful? But it was also exactly eight years since the day I'd lost my parents, and every year before on this day, I'd struggled to keep busy, not think, not remember, not be alone. Yet here I was, sitting on the boat dock down at the lake, doing nothing. The thing is, after a while, anniversaries sneak up on you. You never forget the day, the date. You know it better than your own birthday, and the first year, you wonder if you can even get through it at all, wish that week would just disappear off the calendar. The next year, you think, 'I did it before,' and that becomes your mantra to make it through again. The year after that, you dread it, but you figure you've already survived twice. And that's how the years pass until one year, it's _that day_, and you realize it just . . . arrived. And you forgot to worry. That happened to me for the first time two years ago. I was on the road at the time, running from Nebraska, from Boys' Town, and I woke up on June 22nd, realized what day it was, packed the few things I had with me, and just . . . kept going east. I didn't have time to dwell on it, so I didn't.

But today I have no place to be, nowhere to run, and it's snuck up on me again. Everyone is gone. Hank's at the hospital, Warren's on vacation with his parents somewhere in Europe, Jean's home visiting, and even the professor had business today in the city. He'd invited me along, but the glasses on my nose are too new - I feel self-conscious - so I'd said I'd rather stay here, and he hadn't pushed.

Now, I wish I'd gone along after all, gotten out of that empty, echoing mansion full of Xavier family ghosts. They're not my family ghosts, you see. I came out to the lake because water draws me like a magnet, and I remember.

Not the crash. I have no memory of the crash, even if I'd wanted it; brain damage is like that. You lose things, bits and pieces. What I remember is small stuff.

My mother's hands. I can't recall her face anymore, and that frustrates me - angers me. But her hands . . . I remember her hands so well. They were small and rather veined, and always looked older than her age, tough hands made rough by cleaning liquids, but she'd had nice nails, hard and perfectly oval with little pink moons at the quick. She'd never painted them. And I'd loved her hands because she was always touching me with them, petting and stroking me, but I hadn't wanted to admit that at eight. I was too old for being petted, wasn't I? A big boy ready for fourth grade? I suppose it was those hands, too, that had laced the jump vest on me and Alex, tied it tight, and then pushed us out of the plane hatch on June 22nd, 1986.

Strong hands. I wonder if I resisted. I don't remember.

I recall my father's face better (perhaps ironically) because I saw less of it. He'd had angular features with wide, high cheekbones, black eyes, black hair and a bushy mustache under a fleshy nose. But what I remember better than any of that is his voice; it had carried all over our small house. You could hear every word he said. I can't say if its pitch was high or low or in between, I only remember the quality of it, insistent, not to be denied. For me, it will always be the voice of command, and among the strangest experiences I've had in my life was once to hear _myself_ on a good recording machine. I have my father's voice. A little lighter, younger, but his voice.

There are other things I remember, too - fighting with my brother in the sunroom. Only one of many times, I'm sure, but that was Halloween (my birthday) and we were dressed in our costumes, swinging plastic pumpkins at each other. Dad had walked in to pick us up - one under each arm - and carry us out. I can't remember if I were screaming or laughing harder. I remember how he taught me to ride a bike, running along behind me and telling me to trust my balance. And I remember my mother sitting on my bed, patiently rubbing my back 100 times while I listened to the drone of her voice counting each pass and tried to fall asleep. I remember our dog, and the blackberry bushes along the fence at our last house in Bellevue. I remember following my father while exploring the gypsum dunes of Tularosa Basin at Holloman Air Force Base. They really are white. Blinding in the sun. So many small things, to make up a life.

Because we moved so often (military brat), I don't think I grew attached to any particular house, but there was a wide rock bed in the backyard we had at MacDill, in Tampa. The house itself had been a flat, ugly, Florida ranch-style with a single-car garage and a porch we never sat on because it was too damn hot most of the time. But in back, there were beds of bushes with river rocks. Most were white or gray or brown, but glittering flecks of quartz or mica had laced a few. I'd loved those rocks for some reason, and had painted animals on them. Child petroglyphs. My mother had saved some, kept them on the window ledge in her kitchen. They'd moved with us, when we left MacDill for Holloman, and then to Offutt. I have no idea what happened to them after the accident. Someone probably threw them out. Our caseworker had gone through the house, looking for personal items, but she hadn't saved my rocks.

And now, strangely, it was lost _rocks_ that broke me apart. Worthless but cherished, and given pride of place on a kitchen windowsill. I felt the burn start behind my eyelids but the tears never fell. The goddamn beams blew them away before they could form, and, angry, I squeezed my eyes shut. This was the only way I could cry - eyes shut.

So I did. Laid out on my side on the boat dock in the sun, I cried until I was dehydrated and my stomach hurt and my eyes were swollen. The orphaned child I'd been had cried for lost security, a lost future, the terror of the unknown, and a stolen brother. The orphaned adult cried for everything I'd never know about my parents, for the stories I could only dimly recall, for the lack of belonging or origin . . . and also, maybe just a little, for the child I should have been but had lost along the way.

Mostly though, I just cried, and once uncorked, a hundred other things squeezed out, too - loss, yes, but also fear, and rage at the fundamental injustice of life. It came in waves, peeling away from me like layers of old paint. I'd weep, recover, catch my breath, remember and weep again. I wondered if I'd ever make it down to bare wood.

Finally it was over and the sun was going down. I was almost too weak to move, yet felt clean - pellucid and hollow, like blown glass. My knees shook when I stood, and I stumbled over to the boathouse door, let myself in and grabbed a glass in the kitchen, filling it with water from the tap. I drank it all, then two more glasses after. Finally, I just sat down on the linoleum floor of the little kitchen and tried to catch my breath. I wasn't sure what had just happened to me, but something had. I felt newborn.

As it turned out, 'newborn' was right. It was just the beginning of a long process.

* * *

><p>"Good heavens, what <em>is<em> that? A jigsaw puzzle motorbike?"

I looked up from the book in which I had my nose buried. Jean had entered the garage, and now stood staring at the disassembled 1968 Suzuki T500 spread out on the floor. "It's got a cracked cylinder head and one of the main seals is leaking," I explained.

"So you reduced the whole thing to its component parts in revenge?" But she was laughing.

My lips thinned in a mixture of annoyance and amusement. "Hank's been busy. I told him I'd start taking care of the vehicles out here."

"Since when do you know anything about cars?"

"Since now." I held up the book I was looking at, then pointed to a stack of them spread out on the worktable. Library books, mostly, about cars and motorbike repair. She went over to thumb through them. "You're going to learn to fix cars by reading books?"

I shrugged. It had seemed like a good idea at the time. Now, though, looking at the motorcycle pieces spread out around me, I wasn't so sure. Still, how hard could it be? It was like a puzzle in 3D. I really hadn't needed to take it apart, but I'd wanted to. Vehicular vivisection. Still grinning, she came over to plop down next to me on the garage floor. She was wearing jeans and a tank top in a shade I couldn't discern. It had horizontal stripes. "Can I . . . uh . . . hold something?" she asked.

"Not right now," I said, running fingers over the unseated valve I was studying. "I can't do anything until I take this to a shop and get them to replace the seat. I think. Look at it."

She dutifully looked, then raised an eyebrow at me. "And?"

"And it's a mess, totally loose. Seat height's screwed and the spring pressure's just gone."

"Scott . . . you're yattering. What's seat height and spring pressure? Do you even know? Really?"

I grinned at her. She had me. "Well, I sorta know. I know enough to tell it's fucked up."

She rolled her eyes, then made an all-encompassing gesture with one long hand, taking in the scattered bits of greasy motorcycle on the concrete floor. "Do you actually like this, or are you just trying to prove something?"

My eyes narrowed. "What the hell does that mean?"

"Turning into a grease monkey doesn't make you any more of a man -"

"Well, no, I didn't think it would. And _yes_, I like it." I turned back to the book.

"Really?"

"Yes, really!" Looking up, I glared at her, then leaned closer until we were nose to nose. "What? You think that because I took it up the ass, I'm too much of a pansy to get my goddamn hands dirty? Maybe it's _you_ who don't think I'm a man."

"Scott! That wasn't what -"

"Yes, it was. You're the one who made that crack about being 'more of a man.'"

"I didn't mean -"

"Then what did you mean?"

"_Shit!" _She pulled at her hair, and her shouted obscenity stopped me, mostly because she rarely used such words. "When are you going to forgive yourself? When? You just did what you had to do to survive! I didn't want you to think you had to _prove_ something to the rest of us, that we'd think less of you, or . . . or . . ." She stopped, as if realizing that she was just digging herself deeper. I watched, feeling strangely removed. I had long practice at going cold inside when upset.

The silence stretched. Getting up, she walked among the bike parts, swaying almost, head down, shoulders slumped. "You really like it?" she asked finally, as if unable to let go of that question.

"What? Mechanics? Yeah, I think I do."

She paused somewhere between the oil tank and the muffler, looking back at me to size me up. But it was visual purely; I felt no tell-tale touch on my mind indicating that she was checking my thoughts. "Okay. I just -"

"I know. Drop it."

She sighed and walked back to where I sat on the cold concrete floor, kneeling beside me. "I can't drop it."

"Why not?"

"I'm your friend."

"If you _were_ my friend, you'd drop it!"

"No." Reaching out - slowly - she ran a hand through my hair. "We've been tiptoing all around it ever since that night. First, it was the blindness; you had enough on your mind. Then, it was figuring out the glasses. Now, it's just a habit. We haven't talked about what you did out there before you came to live here."

Annoyed, I pulled away from her fingers. "So what do you want? The nasty details? A lecture on how to give good head?"

She rolled her eyes and let out her breath explosively. One of the things that most irks, and most intrigues me about Jean is how she runs roughshod over my wiseass comebacks, refusing to get offended. Impatient, yes. Offended, no. When I once made a (snide) comment about that, she'd replied with, "I'm a telepath," which both did and didn't explain it.

"I want to know if you can forgive yourself," she said now, plopping down on her ass right in front of me and crossing her ankles. And although it was a repeat of something she'd screamed only a moment before, it caught me off-guard.

"What do you mean?"

"Just what I said. You can't just run away from it, y'know."

"The hell I can't!" My turn to explode to my feet and stalk away. I circled the area restlessly. "Jesus Crippled Christ! Can't I _move on_? Do I have to be a freakin' sob story forever? I just want to get _past_ it, dammit!"

"But you can't until you deal with it. You've had _so much_ happen to you, Scott -"

"- so you're setting yourself up as my fucking _head-shrink_?"

"_No_," she shook her head, "no. I'm not qualified. It's just that ever since . . . that night -"

"- you mean ever since I blasted a hole through Jack Winters and two other dickheads."

"Fine." The word was very precise, enunciated with the click of thinning patience. "Then ever since the night the mansion was invaded and we _defended ourselves_, you have run from one project to another. First, it was the glasses, which I could understand. Next, it was cleaning up the boathouse. Then it was repairing some barn stalls. After that, it was sorting boxes in the attic. And now, you've taken up car repair. Scott, when are you going to let yourself _feel_?"

"You don't know what I let myself feel," I snapped with the same kind of clear enunciation she'd used a minute before. Jean hadn't been on the boat dock the day I'd come apart for a couple hours. Ever since (and even before, if I were honest with myself), the feelings hadn't been far from the surface. I kept them at bay by dint of distraction. "There are days I don't think about it at all, what I did - that I was _whore_. Let's use the right terms, shall we? And other days, I can't think of anything else. And none of that is your _goddamn business_."

She folded her hands in her lap and stared down at them a moment, then pursed her lips and tipped her head to the side, not looking at me. "I don't see much evidence of your feelings, Scott - besides anger when I try to talk about it - and it worries me. What I do see is this . . . manic need to _do_. As if you're trying to prove yourself, or keep too busy to think - or both. I want to know if you can forgive yourself, not prove yourself."

"Forgive myself for _what_?" I yelled, frustrated.

"For doing the best you could do, even if it meant selling your body so you could eat. Yes, you were a 'whore.' But you were also a child alone, and didn't have a choice."

"Holy, fucking . . ." I slammed the book I still held down on a work table. "Good God! Is that how you see it? You think this is some _Lifetime Special_ and I'll be all pretty and pitiable if I get a good cry and you shine a little dirt off? That's not how it works! I sucked cock for money, Jean! I stole stuff and hocked it! I ran cons at pool! I smoked pot to get through a day! I was an ugly, smelly, shit-mouthed street rat, and I haven't really changed!"

She ignored all that to ask, "Did you want to become a prostitute?"

"No -"

"Did you ask to become an orphan?"

"No, but -"

"Did you choose to get shunted around foster homes until you didn't trust anybody?"

"_No_, but -"

"But what, Scott?"

"Didn't you hear a word I just said? I'm not some saint!"

She smiled. "Definitely not. You're just a person. So am I. You made the best choices you could at the time you made them. But you survived, okay? You survived." She peered up at me from where she'd remained sitting. "I just want you to forgive yourself for doing what you had to do, to survive. And you have changed. You've started hoping, trying, caring. And you're allowed to be mad about what happened to you out there - feel sad, feel cheated. God knows, I would. You amaze me, y'know. You're like steel inside. I wish I could be more like you."

Without the last sentence, it would have been just another pep talk, a bit of psychobabble none too different from things the professor had said to me at one time or another, but that last remark caught me by surprise and dropped my mouth open. I couldn't imagine that anyone like her would want to be someone like me. She grinned at my expression and rose, coming over to push my chin shut with a finger. "You're catching flies, Summers. And you really are tough where it counts - in your spirit. Nothing stops you. I want to be tough like that."

Which meant more to me than anything she'd said about my past, or forgiveness. I didn't wish to be pitied, but even more, I needed to be thought well of for something, and the idea that she might think I was strong or tough . . . It surprised and pleased me at once. I thought I might even be _blushing_ (which was yet more embarrassing). She just smiled. "So you really like being a grease monkey?"

"Yeah, I really do."

"Okay." Abruptly, she laughed. "Mechanics, war games, math . . . . You know, Scott, you really are a _guy_."

"Well, yeah, last time I checked. Dick, balls, no tits - I guess that makes me a guy."

She rolled her eyes again. "You do that on purpose sometimes, don't you?"

"Be rude, crude and socially unacceptable? I try."

Swatting me on the head - lightly - she walked off. "Boys and their toys . . . Play with your hotrods, Summers. I'll go find a chick flick on _Lifetime_."

Chuckling, I scratched my cheek and returned to the panhead.

* * *

><p>Death had been on my mind quite a bit of late, and not just because I'd likely be dead before thirty, but because Mariana already was dead, and because I'd killed. Even if killing those men had been accidental, I'd killed. Three people were gone from this earth because of me, and if I suddenly needed to know that death wasn't the end, I think it had more to do with killing than dying.<p>

"Do you believe we have a soul? That any part of us goes on after we die?"

Xavier and I were sitting at the puzzle table in his suite after dinner, working on a new project, this one a 3D representation of the Taj Mahal. Lately, I'd noticed that our choice of puzzle material didn't require color discernment. I picked up shoes and straightened rugs in the path of his wheelchair, and he chose puzzles that I didn't have to see colors to solve. It was through such small courtesies that we had built our mutual affection.

Now, he didn't answer immediately. Instead, he went through seven pieces, looking over each for the one he was after. Finally, he said, "Yes, I do."

"Do you know? I mean, by being a telepath? Can you see if we have souls?"

"No, Scott. I sense minds - consciousness. I cannot sense someone brain dead, nor a mind too deeply unconscious. If I knew a mind well and was looking specifically for it, I might find it even if the person were sedated. But casually? No. It relates to the amount of brain activity. Sleeping minds are working minds, and in REM sleep may even be rather noisy - mentally speaking. But the less brain activity occurring, the less there is for me to sense."

He stopped and studied me a minute. "I can't say that I _know_ we have a soul, but I do _believe_ we have one. There are many things in this universe that exist beyond the realm of the senses . . . even mutant senses." He smiled. "In that respect, I am neither a Stoic nor an Epicurean. I do not subscribe to Sensism."

I rolled my eyes, but had to laugh. Nothing was safe from school lessons. We'd been reading ancient philosophy lately, and although it was now mid-July and technically my 'summer vacation,' I'd discovered that I liked learning and saw little reason to stop doing what I liked just because some calendar said so - not to mention that I'd been unable to do anything much while blind. These days, both my schedule and my schooling had passed so far beyond anything that resembled traditional education that the only way I was still sure I was in school was that the professor made me study things I didn't really want to.

"In any case," Xavier continued now, "knowledge is empirical, but belief _existential_. No experiments will confirm it, no proofs will convince. Only experience."

"Then how can you believe if you haven't died?" I asked, frustrated.

He smiled. "Fair enough. Unfortunately, your question has no easy answer, since it's not a single event or experience that convinced me, but a lifetime of them. Yes, the telepathy does figure into that equation, but not as . . . psionic proof. In the end, it's the sum of what I've seen that tells me, yes, we are more than complicated bio-chemical reactions and a random firing of synapses."

Reaching out, he tapped my forehead gently with his forefinger. "There is a 'you' in there who has been shaped by your body and brain, yet remains more than the physical. When the physical is gone, that 'you' will still be."

He looked away again and went back to the puzzle pieces. "But that is what I believe. What you believe is a journey for you to walk."

Getting up, I strolled over to stand in front of the dark fireplace, hands in my pockets. Outside, I could hear a rumble of thunder from heat lightning, and the professor continued to work at the puzzle, not interrupting while I mulled over what he'd said. If he hadn't convinced me, he had . . . calmed me. It helped just to know that he believed, and that Jean believed, too. The professor might not subscribe to Sensism, but I suppose I did. I believed only what I could verify with my eyes, ears, nose, tongue, and sense of touch. And yet, and yet . . . was that entirely true? There were elements of trust in my world now. After I'd regained my sight but lost colors, Warren had helped me go through my closet to reorganize it, so I didn't wind up wearing a Dutch blue button-down with olive green slacks, and it had never occurred to me that War would have a joke at my expense, or lie about colors. That wasn't Warren; I trusted him to look out for me. Just like I trusted Jean, and the professor, to stay out of my head uninvited.

That was belief, wasn't it? Belief in my perceptions of what others would do? Yes, those beliefs were based on previous evidence, but the evidence had come from _experience_ - that existential life of which the professor had spoken - and those beliefs governed what I thought _would_ happen, not just what I knew had happened.

In truth, I'd been trusting my perceptions for a long time - that hustler intuition that had let me survive the streets long enough to escape them. But rather to my surprise, I now found myself trusting _others_ - Warren, Jean, Hank, the professor . . . I'd come to believe that they wouldn't betray or hurt me. For eight years, 'me' was all I'd had to rely on unconditionally, yet now I _belonged_ to these people, not by obligation, but by choice. Whatever I could give, I would give it without hesitation. It was more than gratitude for a debt owed beyond what I could repay. It had become loyalty, kinship, love - all those deep, deep words I'd been so terrified of since June 22nd, 1986. I belonged to them, and - astonishingly, miraculously, marvelously - they belonged to me.

Going back finally, I retook my seat at the table and returned to studying the pieces we'd organized so carefully. "You believe for me," I said to Xavier.

I doubted that really made much sense but he just nodded. "I shall, Scott. I shall believe for you . . . and believe in you, even when you can't."

* * *

><p>After his tour of Europe, Warren returned to the mansion for a couple of weeks before leaving for New Haven, Connecticut. He was a college boy now, and like every other male member of his family, destined for Yale. But he wasn't sanguine about the future. If Worthington money and telepathic intervention from the professor had quieted rumors, gossip could always erupt again. I also knew he wasn't happy to be leaving me, and not just because he (still) carried a torch. I'd become his best friend, a point he'd stressed often enough that I believed him.<p>

"You'll come visit, right?" he asked one afternoon as we were sorting his laundry three days before he was to leave. He'd gotten quite adept at using the washing machine, a small point of pride for him that he wasn't helpless any longer when it came to household appliances.

"Who me?" I asked. "At Yale?" But it was only half serious. After spending time at Columbia with Jean, I'd gotten over my fear of college, even an Ivy League college. Nonetheless, Yale was Yale. But Warren was Warren, and my friend. "I'll come if you want."

"Absolutely, I want," he replied, grabbing his pile of silk boxers and shoving them into a drawer.

Later after supper, he went out with me onto the front porch while I had a pipe. Here in mid-August, the sun set by eight-thirty and it was right on the horizon now. I wasn't feeling well today - nauseous. The drug cocktails that Hank gave me periodically to delay the onset of AIDS were toxic, like chemo, with a cumulative effect, and if I'd had jujube-citrus tea earlier, I still felt off. Overhead, the first star was visible. _Star light, star bright, first star I see tonight . . . _

"Would you like to go flying?" he asked me abruptly.

I glanced over at him, thinking he meant in his plane. Warren had a pilot's license, which I found amusing, given his mutation. He also had his own private jet, and had recently gained enough hours to qualify for night flying. I'd never been up with him. I tended to avoid planes, at least in the air. On the ground, I found them fascinating and had spent no little amount of time going over the one in the lower levels. But more to the point - "I thought you drove up?"

"I did. And I didn't mean flying in the Jetstar." His wings rippled, to underscore it.

For a moment, I simply stared. While it was true that I avoided getting into planes that got off the ground, it was also true that I rather envied Warren his mutation. To have one's _own_ wings . . . .

I looked down at the pavement and turned the pipe in my fingers. "I don't know," I confessed. I'd been flying once before with Warren, of necessity, and had mostly kept my eyes closed.

"We could go up a little ways, and if you didn't like it, I'd put you right back down."

I thought about it. He didn't rush me. It was a rare thing he was offering. So far as I knew, he'd never offered it to anyone else at the mansion, not even Jean. I wasn't entirely sure why he was offering it to me. Friendship, certainly. Maybe just for an excuse to get his arms around me, but I doubted it. "Why?" I asked him.

He didn't reply at first. When he did, it was one word. "Freedom."

The answer said more about Warren than it said about me. Flying was the only time he was free of the strictures of being Warren Worthington, III. But maybe it did also say a little about me. Warren knew perfectly well that I hated flying.

Bending over a little, I tapped out the pipe ash against the concrete of the porch, then pocketed the pipe and turned to him. "Okay. Let's do it." He smiled a little and stood, offering me a hand up. We walked out onto the lawn beyond the drive. Nighthawks flitted between trees. "What do I need to do?" I asked him.

"Nothing. Just relax." And he moved up behind me, not too close, setting hands lightly on my shoulders. "I'm going to pick you up this way from behind, my arms over your chest, so you can see where we're going. Is that all right?"

A deceptively casual question. I didn't like people getting very close, not in front, and definitely not from behind. He'd have to grip me pretty tightly, too, body to body. I wasn't worried about his ability to hold on. Warren is strong - a part of his mutation, just as an improved sight is part of mine. Not only could Warren pick me up with ease, he could pick up Hank with ease, and probably the professor _in_ his wheelchair.

So he wasn't likely to drop me, but it would be awkward, and intimate, and maybe that's why he hadn't offered this to anyone else.

"All right," I said now, tensing a little as I felt him move closer, slipping his arms around my chest and crossing them upwards so he could grip my shoulders, holding me tight like a vise. I could feel the warmth of his front all along my back, the contours of him, my shoulder blades against his flat chest, my ass pressed to his groin, the backs of my thighs to the front of his. Involuntarily, my breath sped up and my eyes squeezed shut. I couldn't take such overwhelming touch.

He must have sensed something because he let me go, stepping away. "Sorry," he said, giving my back an awkward pat. "Sorry. Maybe it was a bad idea."

That made all the difference, and brought me back to the now. "I thought I could do it," I said, suddenly very angry at myself.

Why did this have to keep coming up? As I'd told Jean, I just wanted to get over it. We stood without speaking for a few minutes, me still facing away from him. Yet when he asked, "Do you want to try again?" my reply was quick.

"No." Then more slowly: "Not right now. I'll take a rain check, okay? But I do want to try again." I'd be damned if I'd let this beat me.

"Okay," he said, then walked away, towards the main mansion entrance. He didn't look back at me and I didn't stop him. When I saw him at breakfast the next morning, his face was a little sad, but he smiled at me. We didn't discuss what had happened, and when he left two days after that, I let him hug me goodbye, even hugged him back and didn't flinch. I thought that a small victory.

* * *

><p>If I'd come to think more about death of late, I'd been struggling <em>not<em> to think about sex. That a sixteen-almost-seventeen-year-old male could manage not to think about sex might seem improbable at best, but I'd been managing quite well for almost a year. As I'd told Xavier, I believed that part of me dead, yet my tearing rebirth on the boathouse dock had resurrected even my sex drive. It came slowly, and mostly when I wasn't looking. Sex for me had always been about control. Even when I'd been kneeling on the floor of a dirty john, the fact that I'd remained unmoved had given me control, or at least the illusion of it. I was the one desired, not the one who did the desiring. Hadn't men paid for my mouth and hands? I was reluctant to give up the power that perspective implied because giving it up would mean I'd just been used.

Yet I noticed pretty girls now, and bared skin, and my libido played peek-a-boo with the erotic. Subtlety turned me on. The more obvious the gambit, the less it caught my eye. Anonymity mattered, too; I only looked at nameless girls I passed on the street, saw in magazines, or in television commercials. If the girl had a name, she became real, and God forbid that I push my nasty little fantasies onto another person. I never masturbated, and if wet dreams still plagued me, I considered that a point of personal weakness. It was all about control, you see.

The anniversary of my arrival at the mansion came in September, passing with little fanfare beyond a special dinner with Xavier and Hank. I think they were trying to mark it, but wanted to avoid embarrassing me, or reminding me too much. After dinner, the three of us sat up in the den, playing chess or reading, and I thought about how I'd changed in only a year. I doubted that a cursory glance at a picture of me then and a picture of me now would be recognizably the same person, though a cynical voice whispered that I hadn't changed in more than the superficial. I was and always would be a two-bit whore.

The next day was a Saturday, and Jean showed up to lure me off to the Westchester Mall, a suitably ritzy place with white walls, brass fittings and brown marble floors accenting upscale shops that catered to the lawyers and doctors and financiers who kept multimillion-dollar homes in Westchester County. I was dragged through three stories, clothes shopping. Clothes for her, that is. I bought mine out of a catalogue - subdued earth tones in dull-preppy styling - but as we passed _Club Monaco_, I spotted a shirt hanging on a sale rack out in the walkway, dye-washed silk like an aurora borealis, though I couldn't tell the shade. Pausing to run my fingers over the cool fabric, I asked her, "What's the color?"

She smiled. "Blue. It'd match your eyes."

"Would have matched."

She ignored that to pluck the shirt off the rack and hold it up to me. "I think it's a bit big." And it was, an extra-large when I still wore mediums - a thin, lanky teen. "But it'd look good on you."

I shrugged and put it back. I didn't want to look good. I didn't want anyone to pay that much attention to me. She watched, a bit sadly, but didn't say anything. We walked on. A few people glanced at me twice. The glasses - at least in Westchester - drew notice. Later, I'd come to realize that most people took me for blind, or a celebrity sneaking out incognito, but at the time, I just knew that they were looking.

Jean finally left me sitting on a bench while she went to run 'quick errands,' which I translated as 'I want to dither over earrings at a jewelry kiosk without Mr. Morose looking at his watch every few minutes.' I'm not sure how long I sat. My brain had switched into idle in that way I'd learned on the street - not pondering much, just staring until my eyes went a little out of focus and my thoughts slipped into a fogged blend of real and imagined.

Gradually, I became aware of what I was staring at.

Sitting across from a Gap store, my attention had been caught by the larger-than-life window ads of exotically pretty people dressed in expensive grunge, and I'd been staring at one in particular - a girl in a tight tank under a loose shirt, and hip-hugger khakis. The photo had cut off her head above the chin, and her legs below the thighs. Her arms were thrown wide, the shirt blown open. The tank ended just above a pierced navel, showing lots of tanned skin made shiny for the camera by oil. She had a slender throat above a sharp jut of clavicles like the wings of a bird, shapely shallow breasts hinting at nipples beneath pale fabric, and a sweeping curve from ribs down to hips, accentuated by the twist of her long torso.

I was mesmerized, all the more so with no face, no identity to get in the way of my visceral, below-the-belt response. Pure body. It jerked me back to reality even as I heard Jean's voice say, "Hey! I'm done."

I turned; she had a new package to add to the pile I'd been babysitting, but that wasn't what riveted my attention.

Her body did.

She had the same body type as the girl in the window. The cut of her tank was different, with a scarf instead of a shirt, but suddenly - and shockingly - I understood why I'd been so held. This was the form that had entranced me. The small breasts and swan neck, the long abdomen and slender arms - they were the same. If the skin glowed paler, that didn't matter. I became choked by new awareness, a terrible humiliation, and painful arousal.

She frowned and asked, "You okay?"

"No, I -" I jerked to my feet and hurried off. "I need to go to the bathroom." Twenty feet away, I turned to call, "I'll meet you by the main entrance outside Nordstrom's in forty-five minutes." I didn't give her a chance to respond before jogging away down the walk. She remained stock still with bags all around her ankles.

I wound up in the food court on level four, and being a Saturday, it was packed with families, flocks of teens, and young singles. I fit right in, and sat down at a two-person table near a wall. On an overcast fall day, the skylight above glowed dim, like my thoughts.

I didn't want to think about what had just occurred. I couldn't be interested in Jean, not sexually. She was only a friend. That she was also a pretty woman had been abstract for me until now. I was in control, wasn't I? I wasn't like other men, led around by my dick. I didn't want to be like that, yet I feared being weak, effeminate - just as Jean had accused me. I _did_ need to prove I was a guy . . . even as I didn't want to be one.

That recognition took me by surprise, yet I had to admit the truth of it. I hated my own gender. Men made victims of others - physically, sexually, financially. To be male rendered me a pariah in my own eyes. Yet to be like a woman implied weakness, victimization, and I didn't want to be a victim, even as I didn't want to be the victimizer. Ironically, a snippet of Scripture circled through my head, a legacy of forced Sunday chapel at Boy's Town: _"For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by men, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Let anyone accept this who can."_

Not that I had plans either to castrate myself or go into a monastery, but I didn't want to be a man like other men.

While I'd been pondering, I'd slouched back in my chair, sprawled casually, knees spread, staring out at the people passing. I was dressed less preppy than usual, just khaki slacks and a dark, tight turtleneck. It had never occurred to me that a mall like Westchester might be a point of bathroom trade, and maybe it wasn't normally, but even rich guys picked up hustlers, and perhaps bored little rich boys made extra cash in the fancy stalls of the food-court john. All I knew was that a stranger had suddenly seated himself at my table with a tray of congealed Mall Chinese Surprise. He'd probably been watching me a while. "Hi," he said. I didn't even start, just eyed him from behind my glasses, only then realizing the small signals I'd adopted without thinking. He was nicely, if casually dressed in expensive duds with neatly graying hair - old enough to be my father, and passers-by would probably make that assumption. He acted nervous, but not as if he didn't know the routine. More as if he feared being caught. I wondered if he'd come to the mall looking for a pickup or had spotted me and acted impulsively?

I thought of a dozen things to say, but said none of them, just waited to see what he'd do next. He glanced up at me, smiled faintly, anxiously, then pretended to eat but mostly pushed around the unidentifiable fried meat in neon orange sauce. I didn't move a muscle. After a decent time when anyone who might have noticed him sit down had quit watching, he pulled out his wallet and flipped it open, extracting bills and slipping them under the edge of the white Styrofoam plate. Twenties. Five of them. He didn't move them towards me but glanced up, as if asking if that were enough, and tapped his lips.

Long practice alone kept me from reacting. The jackass had just laid out my former grocery bill for two weeks, all for a five-minute blow job. It was twice the going rate for tearoom trade, but this was _Westchester_. The kid I'd been was tempted. It would be my cash, not charity from Xavier, and no pimp to cut eighty percent off the top.

But the man I was becoming recoiled at the thought of doing it again, dropping my jaw for some stranger's cock. Now that I'd walked away, I wondered if any amount of money would ever be enough to lure me back to that place.

I took a deep breath, then leaned over the table to spit in his dinner. "I'm not for sale, motherfucker." Getting up, I walked away. Strolled, really. A free man ran from no one.

The paranoid part of me screamed that he might follow, try to avenge the insult, but the shrewder part said he wouldn't. He'd been too nervous, and the more I thought about it, the more I figured he hadn't intended to pick up trade at all, just reacted to what he thought was an opportunity.

Stopping before a decorative brass plaque outside a random shop, I stared at the distorted reflection. You can take the boy out of Alphabet City, but not Alphabet City out of the boy. So what if I'd walked away? He'd seen what I'd been, and I loathed myself for it. Any victory seemed hollow.

To make all of it worse, there was still Jean to face. I arrived early at our rendezvous point, but she was already there, waiting, hands clasped between her knees, bags beside her. Seeing her, my stride slowed, and she must have sensed me because she turned to look right at me, but didn't stand or attempt to approach. I might have bolted, and I think she knew it. She waited for me as if I were a wild animal. I paused, but then came forward and sat down beside her on the lip of a fountain with bronze horses, a good foot between us. "You're early," I said.

"So are you." A pause. "You want to talk about it?"

"No." Lying to Jean was pointless. If I'd said there was nothing to talk about, she'd have scoffed and pushed. Telling her the truth worked much better. Usually.

"You looked pretty upset earlier, Scott. You still do, in fact."

"I got spooked," I admitted. And I had. "But I don't want to talk about it." My eyes were roaming the crowd of shoppers, half-afraid that I'd spot the man who'd propositioned me upstairs, but he must have been long gone.

"What if you wrote me about it instead?"

"Huh?" Taken by surprise, I turned to stare at her. She wasn't looking my way.

"Scott, your face upstairs . . . You were looking at me like you hated my guts. I don't know what I did, but if you could tell me, maybe I could avoid doing it again."

And I was as amused as I was unnerved. I wanted to say, 'Can you stop being a woman?' but didn't. She couldn't stop being a woman any more than I could stop being a man . . . and that was the fundamental problem, wasn't it? I _wasn't_ a eunuch, and I was sitting beside a beautiful woman who I'd just realized - at a gut level - _was_ beautiful. But I didn't want that realization. She was Aphrodite to my Hephaestus, and like the forge god, I was ugly and maimed - crippled in my soul. She'd never love me, and I didn't even want her to. I might get soot on her. My past wasn't going to go away.

"You didn't do anything," I said now. She hadn't, either, unless one counted just being.

"And you're not going to tell me about the rest?"

"I don't know how to, Jean."

We didn't say anything after that, both prisoners of our insecurities.

* * *

><p>My birthday fell on October 31st, Halloween. I can't recall whether I'd liked that as a child, but as an adult - and a mutant - I found it ironic at best. Fortunately (to my mind) the mansion was far enough off the beaten track of trick-or-treaters that the professor didn't make much of the holiday. But he did make much of my birthday. I had a cake, balloons, even an unexpected guest - Warren drove over from New Haven. Technically, my birthday fell on a Monday, but they chose to celebrate it the weekend before so Warren could be there. I hadn't had a birthday like it since the foster home in Kearney, and found myself smiling all through the meal.<p>

Hank had (predictably) bought me books, including the _Riverside Shakespeare_. Warren, who'd embarked on a crusade to lure me to Yale the next fall, had come armed with Bulldog paraphernalia. I just laughed at him. I'd kept my promise to visit, but still found absurd the idea of squandering a five-digit yearly tuition on a kid with a viral death sentence - even if I had a prayer of getting into Yale in the first place, with my record.

Jean's gift, however, took me by surprise, though it probably shouldn't have. She'd bought me that blue silk shirt from the mall, and a few others besides, none the sort of clothes I wore now - but not the kind I'd worn before, either. I tried to hide my ambivalence, going into the kitchen to doff my button-down and try it on for her. It was too large, as I'd known it would be, but felt wonderful against my skin, soft and cool - maybe a little too cool for that time of year with short sleeves, but I ran a hand down the front anyway, indulgently. It had been the feel of it that had drawn me in the first place. When I came back out into the dining hall, she smiled, saying, "I told you it'd look good on you." And all I had to do was glance at Warren's face to know she was right. That upset me, and I just wanted to get it _off_, but if I took it off, I'd hurt her feelings. Torn, I stood halfway between the kitchen and the table, unable to move in either direction.

_She thought you didn't buy it because of the price, Scott. _

The professor's voice, inside my head. And I understood then, but the price had nothing to do with it. _It was on sale_, I sent back. I didn't know what else to say, how to explain.

He must have understood anyway. _It is a chilly day,_ he offered. A graceful escape.

Aloud to Jean, I said, "Thanks. But I'm, uh, a little cold." I turned around in place once, obediently modeling, then escaped back into the kitchen to redress in simple cotton. It would be two years before Jean's shirt fit me, either in size or display.

My most significant birthday present, though, came on the day after I turned seventeen, in Yonkers Family Court.

Normally, the assignment of my wardship would have been completed within six months, but the fact I'd come from Nebraska complicated matters, turning my case into a battle between states, though I wasn't sure if both were trying to exert their control by claiming me, or by forcing the other to take me to get out of dealing with a brain-damaged, HIV positive, mutant juvenile delinquent. I was a caseworker's placement nightmare. But the fact that I was the ward of one state while the petition for my guardianship was being made in another meant two court systems and two state child protection services with different criteria had to talk to one another and come to an agreement. Twice, the professor himself had gone to Nebraska to expedite matters. He hadn't taken me with him. Until these last few months, I really hadn't been up to dealing with the legal snarls and frustrations, but now I'd taken an interest. It was my life, after all.

Our court appearance today marked the final step in the process. The professor and I were to appear before the Honorable Janice DiFore sometime around 11am for her ruling as to whether or not he'd become my legal guardian permanently, instead of just temporarily. The professor wasn't nervous but I was a basket case. Everything rode on this decision. If she ruled against us, I didn't care what anyone said, I'd be gone before they could catch me. There was no way in hell I'd go back to Nebraska, even for a year. Xavier kept telling me that the odds were all on our side, and even if she said 'no,' it'd only be a year. I could make it for one year, then I'd be an adult and could return to New York with no opposition. But he'd never been a ward of the state. A year was a hell of a long time, and I didn't have so many of them left to waste one in purgatory.

I'd asked - once - if he'd mess with the judge's head for me, and he'd just _looked_ at me in that way he has, saying, 'I'm disappointed in you,' without a word being spoken. I never asked again, though (many years later) he did admit that he'd have done whatever it took because he'd also been well aware that I'd planned to run again, if forced to return. 'But it's better _not_ to circumvent the law, unless given no choice. I didn't want you to view mutant gifts as an excuse to become a law unto one's self, Scott.' Later, I understood that it would also have robbed me of my victory, made it cheap. I had my day in court, and it meant something.

Carol Morrison, my caseworker, met the two of us outside the courthouse. Xavier wore one of his ubiquitous suits and I'd dressed well, but not formally. Hank had helped me choose: a sport jacket over an oxford, no tie. He'd offered to come, too, as had Jean, but I'd wanted to do this without an audience, in case it went against us. Now, Carol gave me an encouraging smile when she took my hand in greeting, but I didn't react (from nerves), and she asked to speak to me alone.

_Oh, joy. Here we go again_, I thought.

She took me to an anonymous private room inside the courthouse and sat me down in a hard wood chair at a battered, institutional table, got me weak coffee in Styrofoam but didn't offer an ashtray until I asked for one. She doesn't approve of my bad habits but knows better than to bother fighting them. I lit a cigarette and politely blew the smoke away from her. I still turned to Camels at times for convenience, though preparing a pipe would probably have been more calming for me right then. But I didn't want people to think Xavier had influenced me that much.

She sat across from me and watched a moment. "You're absolutely sure you want to go through with this? After today, it'll be a lot harder to undo."

"Goddammit." But it came out more tired than angry. "How many times do I have to fucking say this? I know what I'm doing. You think there's some weird voodoo shit going on, but there's not."

"Scott, this is the strangest case I've ever seen. Fifty-something multi-millionaires don't offer to become foster fathers for -"

"- ex-whores?"

"I didn't say that. I've never used that term."

"Yeah, I know. But you can cut the PC crap. It's what I am."

"That and a good dozen other things." She sighed. "You're almost as unique as your situation, and I thought we were past your attempts to shock me for effect. But the fact remains that you're a very pretty young man, and he's old, unmarried . . . red flags go up all over the place."

I took a drag and this time, blew smoke right at her along with my words. "You think I'm his house boy. You still think that, no matter what I say. Fuck. Why in hell are we even having this conversation? I know you're going to tell the judge to turn me down." My belly had shriveled and it was all I could do not to bolt from the room and leave the courthouse altogether.

"The judge makes her own decisions. Background and medical checks have been run, your own statements are on record, along with others . . . everything turns up roses. But Scott - I _worry_."

"Yeah? Save it for somebody who needs it." I held up the cigarette and watched smoke curl, lazy and aimless, in the room's still air. It kept me from looking at her. I wasn't sure why I was so mean to her. I'd had bad caseworkers before and Carol didn't qualify, but ever since she'd been assigned to my case, she'd been pushing and prodding about Xavier's interest in me. Naturally, given my history, she'd feared it involved sexual favors, and if she _hadn't_ been concerned, she'd have been irresponsible. I knew that. She was just doing her job. But it had become a thorn in my side.

"Look, like you said, everything's been cleared. You have my medical reports and you have _his_ medical reports. He's a _paraplegic_, dammit." I was being disingenuous and we both knew it. "You've had the Department of Probation, ACS," (Administration for Children's Services), "and the State Registry," (the State Central Registry of Child Abuse and Maltreatment), "all over this case, and they haven't found a single goddamn thing against him. Plus I've told you . . . how many times now? . . . that he doesn't want sex from me. I think I'd know, okay? I'm not being coerced, forced, or fucking blackmailed. He's an advocate of mutant rights. I'm a mutant. You don't have to look any further than that."

She was smiling ever so faintly. "You weren't a mutant last year, Scott. How did he know?"

She's not a dumb woman, and she smelled a rat. It was just the wrong rat. "Chance," I lied.

"You're hiding something."

"No, I'm not!" It was a little too vehement, a little too self-righteous, but even former con artists and ex-hustlers have off-days. Her face told me that she wasn't buying it and I sighed. "Look, you think there's something more here. There's not - not like you mean." When all else failed, I fell back on honesty. "So this is the weirdest case you've ever seen. Big deal. Is it really so hard to believe there are good people out there?" The question tasted strange on my own cynical tongue. "If so, why are _you_ doing this shit yourself? It's not like you get any decent pay for it."

Finally, I'd struck true. She blinked. I barreled on before she could say anything. "He's a good person, okay? So he happens to be filthy rich, so the fuck what? It's a crying shame how others assume rich people are just out for themselves. Envy." I thought of Warren as well as Xavier. "The professor treats me like I'm a _person_, not a side of beef, or a pity project, or a fucking _problem_. He talks to me and he listens to me. He thinks I might have something to say and a brain in my head. Isn't that _good enough_?"

I wasn't sure where this was coming from, but my irritation had unleashed my tongue and I couldn't shut up, even if I were digging my own grave. Xavier had believed in me when I'd needed it. I'd defend him now.

"Okay, fine. You want an ulterior motive? Well, try this one. He doesn't have any kids. He'll never have any kids. I don't have a dad any more. Did it ever occur to you that it might be as simple as that?" It was as close as my pride would let me get to, _He's become my father. Don't orphan me twice. _

Carol had actually teared up, and now wiped at her eyes. She freely expressed all the feelings I couldn't anymore, and maybe I'd finally found the right alchemy of words to convince her because she said, "All right. But I had to be _sure_, Scott. This is a one-in-a-million case."

"Too good to be true. Yeah, I know." And whatever I'd just said about Xavier, a part of me was _still_ waiting for the other shoe to drop, so I could hardly blame Carol for it. I leaned back in my seat. "Will the judge rule for us?" I'm sure she could read a lot of things in my face, including my fear, hope, and suspicion.

"I think she probably will. But I'll be honest with you, the best argument in your favor _isn't_ your hard-to-place status, or the fact you're a mutant. It's how you speak, Scott - at least when you're being yourself. You're an exceptionally intelligent, articulate young man. Special. It makes the fact you wound up in a special situation a little easier to believe."

I blinked behind my glasses. How strange to hear her call me the same thing the man in the silver jag had, over a year ago. Erik Lehnsherr.

"Go in there," Carol said, "and when the judge asks you questions, speak like yourself. Don't play games or try to hide your brains. Maybe you're the son Dr. Xavier never had, but he didn't pick you randomly. Like calls to like. However you came to his attention" - her smile was wry and I knew she didn't believe the story Xavier had spun a year ago - "you _kept_ his attention because you're you. And that's the best argument you've got for convincing the judge that he's the right guardian to assign. We do _want_ to do what's best for each child, Scott."

I chewed on that a moment. Xavier had fought this battle, jumped through legal hoops, because it was _me_, and he was laying claim to me in some symbolic way that maybe even he didn't fully recognize. "Okay," I said finally.

Carol escorted me back to where Xavier waited patiently in the hallway near the courtroom. The place smelled of varnish and recycled air, and he gave me a faint smile when we returned. He didn't have to ask what the eleventh-hour consultation had been about. _I take it you've soothed her concerns yet again? _

_Yeah. She's like a damn terrier. _

_She has every reason to be suspicious, Scott. In fact, I admire her for her tenacity. _

Carol had seated herself and was thumbing through my folder. I stood near Xavier's chair. We were, of course, late getting in, and called forward even later. Far from my first time in family court, I'd wisely brought a book to keep myself occupied - tried not to think. Xavier just sat quietly, eyes shut, meditating. Finally our turn came and Carol led us forward, presenting the petition. The judge, a woman in her mid-fifties, thin and neat with beauty-parlor permed hair, listened, and when Carol was finished, crooked a finger at me to approach the bench. Surprised, I hesitated, but Carol pushed me forward. I went. The judge studied me a moment, then asked, "This is what you want?" Yet the simplicity was deceptive. There was nothing perfunctory here, and for the first time since I'd woken in Omaha's Children's Hospital after the plane crash, I felt as if what _**I**_ thought actually mattered. She'd read the reports, heard the petition, but she wanted my opinion.

"Yes, ma'am, this is what I want."

She couldn't see my eyes behind the glasses, but I felt as if she knew right where they were. She held them a full minute, and I didn't look away. "You can change your mind, even now."

"I know. I don't want to."

Nodding once, she picked up her gavel. "I hereby approve the petition of Charles Francis Xavier, residing at 1407 Greymalkin Lane, Westchester, New York, to become the guardian of the person and property of Michael Scott Summers." And she brought her gavel down. That echo is lodged forever in my mind. Freedom for me sounds like the crack of wood-on-wood.

There was a little party at the mansion afterwards and I got tipsy on champagne. The fact that my newly appointed guardian would give his underage ward two glasses of bubbly might have raised the judge's eyebrows - but I doubt it. I fell asleep by ten (early for me) and slept the clock round; I'd needed it. When I woke in the morning, the professor was already in his office and had been for a while. He called for me after my shower. There was another man there, too, who I'd never seen before. "Scott, this is one of my attorneys, James Davidson. Jim, Scott Summers." The man rose to shake my hand. "Have a seat, Scott."

I got all tense. What was happening now? Was this the other shoe dropping? Had I been a fool, after all? Sensing my alarm, Xavier actually motored his chair out from behind his desk and up beside the one I occupied, laying a hand on mine. _Relax. Just a few more legalities. _

Bemused - hadn't the court clerk taken care of everything yesterday? - I accepted the documents that Davidson offered me and looked down.

It was a will . . . the professor's will. Davidson droned on, explaining the complicated legalese that converted Xavier's family estate into a trust fund. I'd been named as a signatory - my presence had been required so Davidson could get my signature - but I'd also been listed first and foremost as inheritor. The estate would retain Xavier's name, but would pass to me upon the professor's death.

Put simply, I'd just been designated Xavier's heir.

I was very glad of the glasses, and of the fact I couldn't cry with my eyes open. I signed all Davidson's papers so he'd go away and leave us alone. "How long have you been planning this?" I asked when the man departed.

"Well, I've intended for some time to convert the estate into a trust. At my age, I have to start thinking of such things, and it will simplify matters considerably when I die."

"Professor," I interrupted, hating to state the obvious, hating to be that cold, but I felt the point needed to be made, "you know you'll probably outlive me."

His glance was sharp. "No, we _don't_ know that."

"But it's likely -"

"- we don't _know_ that, Scott. You're young and perfectly healthy right now."

_Yeah, but for how long? _I asked in my own mind, quite sure he could overhear. But he didn't say anything - more upset by the thought than I was - and it suddenly struck me that, somewhere in the last ten months, I'd come to some kind of terms with my impending death. It no longer scared me. We all live with mortality but don't let ourselves think about it. I hadn't had a choice, and now, I spoke of dying with an ease that disconcerted the rest of them, even Xavier. It left me unsure what to say, and my own need to drag in reality seemed . . . ungracious. "Thank you," I told him finally. "You didn't have to do this."

"Of course I did. I hardly like to think of this place dismembered by distant relatives and sold to developers . . . and that's precisely what would occur." He looked up. "I am not, I fear, doing you a favor. This will almost certainly be contested, by my stepfather and stepbrother if by no one else. Mr. Davidson is well aware of that, and we've armed you as best we can to withstand the siege. But you can expect an argument."

"Yes, sir." Somehow, I felt better knowing that. He had personal reasons of his own for making this choice. "I'll keep the estate in one piece for you."

He smiled. "I'm quite sure you will. Now, go and get yourself some breakfast."

Nodding, I stood, then said, "I'd rather nobody knew about this just yet, sir."

"As you wish, Scott."

"Thanks."

Maybe it was guilt that sealed my lips, or a fear that too much good fortune would make even the gods jealous, but I kept my mouth shut for some time.

Yet I did go out that morning to sit on the front step with a breakfast of cold bagel and hot coffee, looking across the land that would one day be mine. The November wind was biting and fresh, whipping up fallen leaves into little zephyrs and scattering them again into new patterns.

* * *

><p><strong>Notes:<strong> Lovingly dedicated to my grease-monkey brother, who learned to fix cars by reading library books. The Scriptural quote is from the _Gospel of Matthew,_ RSV. The name of Scott's caseworker is a nod to Lelia Burke (though it's not the same person).


	11. Vita dalla morte

It began with that most classic of symptoms - a night sweat.

I woke somewhere after midnight in a soaking wet bed. It was so bad, I had to change my sheets and take a shower. By morning, muscle aches and diarrhea had appeared, too. Joy. I lay on my back and stared at the ceiling. The light in the room was unusually bright because it had snowed the night before, not much, but enough to coat the lawn and reflect the morning sun, and the big, drafty mansion was colder than a witch's tit. Even with a fever in my bones, I had heavy covers piled on. I felt too ill to get up, and I was angry. Furious, in fact.

Couldn't fate see fit to give me a break? It seemed that for every good thing that happened in my life, something bad came along to trump it. Sure, I'd expected the disease to hit eventually, but I'd hoped for a little longer before it did. It was only the Monday after Thanksgiving.

Rolling over, I fell back to sleep, woke again when a light touch tapped me on a mental shoulder. The professor, wanting to know where I was. I might not have been a morning person, but I did usually show my face by noon. Yet according to my bedside clock, it was after two. _Sorry_, I sent back to him. _I'm not feeling well. _For some reason, I didn't want him to know precisely how - protecting him, perhaps, though he'd find out the truth soon enough. _I think I just want to sleep. _

I should've known that wasn't going to work. He was knocking on my door within five minutes. Sighing, I called, "Come in." He never enters my room uninvited, even though it's his house.

Pushing the door open, he motored his way in and up to my bed, reaching out to lay the back of his hand on my forehead. "Definitely fevered. Have you taken cold medicine?"

"No, sir."

"Not even aspirin?"

"No, sir." With the drug cocktails Hank fed me, I was afraid to touch anything else. I'd taken some Excedrin one afternoon half a year ago for a headache, and had wound up puking my guts out in the toilet from the drug interaction. Just the cocktails themselves were bad enough.

"What are your other symptoms, besides this fever?"

"Muscle aches, upset stomach, diarrhea."

"I do believe you have the beginnings of a winter flu, Mr. Summers. It's been going around." He didn't sound very worried, almost amused, in fact. "Stay in bed and rest, and I'll have the cook send up some chicken soup and apple juice. Henry will be in to see you when he returns from the hospital. It will be late, though, I fear."

"Okay. Thanks." I rolled onto my side away from him. I hadn't told him about the night sweat and wondered if I should, then decided just to save it for Hank. It wasn't like the professor could do anything, besides worry.

The cook woke me a little later with food. I could barely eat, although I did drink all the juice and she sent up more in a cooler, so I didn't have to go very far to fetch it. I slept most of the day, rising only to hit the bathroom. I forgot all about the drugs I was supposed to be taking. Hank arrived home after eleven in the evening and came straight up. I'd been sleeping again, but when he woke me, I'd already drenched the bed, just like the night before. He changed the sheets himself and made me sit in a chair, drinking more juice. "Staying hydrated is very important, Scott." He didn't say anything else and I watched him. He looked tired after a day at the hospital, but when he was done, he asked, "Do you think you can get down to the medlab with my help?"

Wobbly on my feet and fuzzyheaded, I hadn't moved further than the room's private bath all day, but I nodded. He got a robe on me and took me down to the lab, kept me from staggering into the walls. I couldn't walk straight and my head was buzzing. I ached all over and had to move slowly to avoid becoming so dizzy, I threw up. Hank was extraordinarily patient. I suppose he could have picked me up and carried me like a baby, but he let me get there on my own two feet.

In the lab, though, he simply lifted me up onto the exam table himself. "Lie down," he said. I did and he ran the usual tests, checking my temperature, blood pressure, listening to my breathing, checking my ears and throat (though definitely not my pupils). He didn't ask me for anything beyond my symptoms, which I gave him in more complete detail than I'd given Xavier. His face was solemn as he gloved to take a small blood sample. Then he gave me some new medication, took me off my usual medication, and slapped me (unexpectedly) with a saline IV on a slow drip. "I'd like you to stay here tonight. Between fever and diarrhea, you've lost a lot of fluid. You're dizzy and light-headed right now from simple dehydration." Then he took me to one of the med beds off the main bay and tucked me in. I didn't wake until sometime early in the morning. The sheets were damp again, but not as badly as before and I was able to ignore it, empty my bladder and go back to sleep.

Hank came in before he left for the hospital and took out the IV. "You look much better today, not so dark under the eyes or so flushed." He gave me some more medication and helped me back up to my room, putting me to bed. Later that morning, the professor visited and we talked for a while until I fell asleep again. I'd probably slept forty of the last forty-eight hours. By evening, though, I felt well enough to get up and come downstairs for supper, or rather, more soup for me, supper for the professor. The cook clucked about like a mother hen and stocked up my cooler with juice. Mindful of what Hank had said the night before, I made sure to drink plenty, even if it meant running to the restroom. Everything seemed to go right through me.

Hank was back earlier that night. He must have gone straight to the sub-basement as we didn't see him until after supper. He entered the dining hall where Xavier and I were talking over juice and tea. I had one of the mansion cats sprawled in my lap, a big fat black male with his legs hanging off either side. "Scott," Hank said, "could I see you in the lab?"

Glancing at Xavier, I rose (dumping the cat, who protested loudly) and followed him out. I didn't need his assistance this time to get downstairs. "You're feeling better, I see."

"Yeah."

"Excellent." But he said nothing more than that. In the lab, he gloved and we went through the full blood test procedure, tourniquet and all. He took four vials, two from each arm. "Geez Louise, Hank." I eyed him. "Is it that bad already?"

He just shook his head and gave me more medication. Whatever it was must have had a sleeping drought in it, because I was back in bed within half an hour. I slept the night through, and for once, didn't soak my sheets. In the morning, I was sneezing and had a runny nose, but otherwise, felt better. I was getting over the bug quickly, whatever it had been - far more quickly than I'd expected. Didn't AIDS interfere with the immune system? But that evening, Hank called me down to the lab once again and took yet more blood as well as a cheek swab. I was starting to get nervous because he still wasn't telling me a damn thing. "What the hell is up?"

"I can't say anything until I've completed all tests, Scott, and some of them require intensive lab work, running gels, separating proteins to blot strips, and then incubation periods. That means I need time." He glanced at me. "I should know something by next Thursday." Thursday seemed a long way away - a full week. Just a week ago, I'd been stuffing myself with turkey.

Jean showed up at the mansion on Friday evening for the weekend, but disappeared into the lab with Hank as soon as he got home. I wasn't sure that I liked the notion Jean now knew I was HIV positive, but as she knew everything else, it seemed a trivial objection. I was called down yet again for the routine blood sample, though this time, they took only a single vial. I was still sniffling and tired, but definitely on the mend. I saw little of either Hank or Jean all weekend, so I had no chance to talk to Jean, but by Sunday, I felt considerably better, and by Monday, I showed up in Xavier's office for my usual lessons. Hank continued to take blood samples from me on a regular basis.

He was on all-night call Wednesday, but returned home by ten on Thursday morning, retreating to the lab to work instead of to his bedroom to sleep. That made me feel guilty as well as nervous about the results of what he was doing down there. I tried going to class, but found concentrating impossible and Xavier dismissed me, advising me to take a ride, yet by the time I had my gelding tacked, it'd begun to snow, as if to confirm that yes, December had arrived. The previous Monday's snowfall had melted off by noon the same day (though I hadn't been awake to notice), but today it came down heavy and I thought it might stick. Sighing, I took the horse back to the interior arena and we worked there, though he showed more enthusiasm for it than I. The rest of the afternoon, I spent cleaning or polishing because it kept me warm and made me too tired to think, while not requiring any real focus. Dark was approaching by the time I felt Xavier's touch on my mind**: ** _Hank and Jean are requesting our presence downstairs. _

_Jean's here?_

_She arrived after lunch. _

Well, that was interesting; she almost never came out to the mansion during the week. Being in the stables, I'd missed her arrival just like I'd missed lunch, but I hadn't been hungry, and now, the fact she was here and Hank was calling down both Xavier and me suggested his news wouldn't be good - though I'd been expecting as much. Still, as the professor and I took the elevator below, my belly rumbled and I belched. Loudly. My stomach could always be counted on to give me away when I was nervous. Xavier glanced over at me. "He didn't sound upset, Scott."

"Yeah, well, if it wasn't bad, why does he want us both? He could tell me it was just the flu without an audience."

Xavier couldn't answer that, but he'd been right about Hank's mood, he'd just understated it by a magnitude of ten. Hank was all but bouncing off the walls (literally, in his case), and Jean wore one of her vibrant smiles. She turned at the sound of the pneumatic doors swishing open.

"Jesus," I said to them both. "You guys look like you won the damn lottery."

"In a manner of speaking, I do believe that _you_ have!" Hank replied, leaping a lab table dangerously close to the equipment and hurrying over to take my elbow and pull me towards a metal tray. "Look, look!" On it lay a variety of what appeared to be test strips and slides. All of them were rather . . . blank.

"Yeah, so?"

"They're _negative_, Scott," Jean told me, having leaned up against the table on the other side. She pointed them out. "The Chiron QC-PCR and the Coulter ELISA." She held up one of the slides. "Nothing. Zilch. Duplicated zilch, in fact." She picked up the mate of the slide she was holding.

I blinked behind my glasses. They couldn't be saying what I thought they were saying, could they? I turned to Xavier, who appeared as astonished as I was. "Okay. But what the fuck does this all _mean_?"

"These are standard HIV tests," Hank explained. "The same ones I gave you September of last year - well, not the PCR test - and again in April right after your mutation manifested. But these are _negative_. You're _negative_. HIV _negative_. At no point before has your blood ever been _completely_ free of the virus. You have a drug-resistant strain. Moreover, I took you off your usual antiretroviral meds when you came down with the flu and haven't put you back on them. It's been almost two weeks - yet there's still no detectable virus in your blood."

"That's impossible."

"We know," Jean said, but she was smiling. "That's why we did the tests several times. Every one reads negative. But before, every test Hank ran came out showing some trace of the virus."

"I had to be sure," Hank explained. "I didn't want to say anything until I was fairly sure. It's still not a hundred percent, but - "

"- but this is _impossible_," I said again, mostly because I was afraid to believe them.

Xavier had motored up to the lab table as well and accepted the tray of results that Hank handed him. "You are certain of these, Henry? Could the test units have been faulty?"

"I already thought of that. I purchased additional units for duplication from Coulter, and Jean and I made up fresh batches of chemicals. Like I said . . . it's not a hundred percent, but his viral loads have always been somewhat high, CD4 counts low, even on the drugs - and now he's showing nothing. No detectable virus in the blood, so _something_ has to be controlling it.

"Back in September, I did the standard ELISA test, then verified it with a Western Blot. We started the antiretroviral treatments. I checked again in December and in May, to track the advance of the infection. The drug cocktails had taken down the viral presence, but not to zero and it didn't change much between December and May. In fact, the May counts were slightly _higher_ . . . and I think I now know why. I should have done a third check-up on him last month, but with all the court proceedings, I put it on hold. So when he turned up ill on Monday with night sweats, I immediately ran a count on CD4 T lymphocytes, expecting to find them lowered."

Hank pushed himself up to sit on the lab table to face all of us. "Instead his CD8 and CD4 counts were _higher_ than usual, not lower. That's exactly what I'd expect to find in someone suffering a viral infection . . . but not necessarily what you find with HIV disease. In short, his immune system was working normally - that is, overtime to trounce the flu virus. Plus, the HIV antibodies were significantly lower, suggesting there was no HIV virus present in the blood . . . and probably hadn't been for a while.

"The next day, I took more blood samples. While the CD8 and CD4 counts were still high, the flu virus was weaker than it should have been - particularly _that_ virus, as we have a nasty strain out and about this year. He was defeating it _faster_ than normal, not slower. So I took the rest of the blood and ran a standard battery of tests, including the newest version of ELISA. When I got the results, I was floored. The ELISA test came up showing him _negative_ for HIV." Reaching over, he plucked up a Polaroid shot of a test result with a date and my name on the back, and handed it to me. "You might want to save that for sentimental value.

"You have to understand, ELISA is a problematic test because it's inclined to false _positives_ . . . not false negatives. It's usually used as a first line test for that reason. It's got a 99.7% sensitivity rating - that is, it almost always catches the disease. If it says you're negative, then you're almost certainly negative. It's when it shows a positive that we do a back-up test, usually the Western Blot. That's what I did for Scott a year ago. The ELISA showed positive, so I ran the other test to confirm it.

"On Thursday, I took more blood and a cheek swab and began a battery of HIV tests. Those are what Jean and I were finishing this afternoon." He gestured to the tray. "All negative. Even more interesting, the influenza virus is completely dead. In most patients, this virus takes one to two weeks to be eliminated from the system. Scott's body killed it in four or five days."

I'd listened to Hank's rain of words with increasing confusion. I both did and didn't understand what he was saying and ran a hand through my hair, more upset than jubilant. Jean had sensed that and come around the lab table to slip an arm about my waist. "I don't get it," I said. "I don't _get_ it. Are you saying I'm a . . . walking cure for AIDS or something?"

"Or something," Hank replied. "We don't know for sure how this happened, though I have a theory."

Xavier held up a hand to halt Hank before he could launch in. "Scott - do you need to sit down?"

"I - yeah. Yeah, I do." Jean reached with her mind, never letting go of me, and brought a nearby lab stool to set it down behind me, easing me onto it. "This is . . . " but I trailed off. I had no idea how to express what I was feeling, nor did I even fully understand it.

I'd been prepared to die. Not tomorrow, perhaps, but long before my allotted four score and ten years. Now, Hank was handing me a reprieve. I should have been jubilant, ecstatic, delighted. Instead, I was just . . . numb, unsure how to respond, afraid to be hopeful but guilty for feeling broadsided. How many people dreamt of receiving news like this? Yet I was just confused by my good fortune.

"How?" I said finally, and Xavier nodded then to Hank.

"I think it's your mutation."

"You mean I have another one?"

"No, I mean it's a side effect of the one you have. We'll have to run more tests to be sure, but as near as I can guess, your body's natural process of converting solar radiation into force blasts also contributes to the _ir_radiation of bacteria and viruses. Now, normally, UV light kills bacteria but _excites_ latent viruses - such as HIV - by responding to the cellular proteins a cell makes when damaged; the virus 'turns on,' making more of itself. In fact, when Scott first became ill, I feared that's what had occurred. That his mutation had sped things up."

He glanced over at me. "I didn't want to say anything to you about that possibility earlier, as I had no real idea what your mutation would do and saw little reason to alarm you with vague possibilities. As it turns out, that was wise. Apparently, the amount of UV light you absorb is _so_ great, and the conversion process so powerful, your body kills _both_ bacteria _and_ viruses. Not instantly, at least not with viruses - they do go into a brief frenzy of replicating themselves, which can make your initial reaction stronger and I suspect that's the reason you fell so ill with the flu. Combined with the antiretroviral drugs I've been giving you plus HIV damage, your body had a hard time fighting it off.

"I suspect you've been HIV negative since early summer, but as I took blood samples only a few weeks after you manifested, your body hadn't had time to kill all the virus in the plasma and blood cells yet. That's why the counts were higher in May. The virus was desperately trying to reproduce itself fast enough to survive."

"Could I cure others?"

Hank's eyes turned sad. "I think not, although we will run additional tests just to make sure it's not something your body _produces_ that killed it. But I fear it works only for you, nor will your mutation save you from other sorts of illness, only bacterial and viral infections. Moreover, HIV infects some cells that have a very long half-life, the memory T cells. You aren't completely free of the virus and may never be in your lifetime . . . but you'll never develop AIDS. Any new virus produced from latently infected memory T cells would be killed before it could infect new cells."

"What if this is all a mistake?"

Jean squeezed my waist. "That's why we waited till today even to tell you this much. So your hopes wouldn't be raised falsely. We'll wait a few more months and run tests again, but neither of us expects the results to change. You're not going to die, Scott, at least not from HIV."

I got up and walked away from them at that point, walked right out of the lab, took the elevator above, grabbed a coat, scarf and boots, and went for a walk outside in the snow and twilight. I'm sure they hadn't expected that response, but what do you say when someone hands your life back to you? It had taken me a year to get used to the idea that I was going to die. I couldn't get used to the idea that I was going to live in the blink of an eye. It changed so much. If I were going to live, that meant I had to figure out what I was going to do with myself.

I hadn't gotten very far, ambling about the estate yard with no clear direction, when I spotted Jean tromping through the snow after me. "Scott," she called, her breath white in the frigid air. "It's almost dark and you're still getting over the flu!"

I stopped in the shade of an evergreen near the mansion wall. Flurries swirled in the wind and the cold bit at my nose and ears. "I wore a scarf."

She rolled her eyes and slipped her arm into mine, dragging me back towards the mansion. I balked and she looked back at me. "What is it?"

"I just - I want to be alone."

Her expression was more impatient than puzzled. "Why?"

"I don't know. I just do. I need . . . I need to think, okay?"

The impatience softened. "All right. But please don't stand around outside."

"I'll go down to the boathouse. Will that do?"

She nodded, then leaned in unexpectedly to kiss me on the cheek, her breath warm again my skin. "I'm so happy for you."

The kiss caught me by surprise even though Jean's inclined to such gestures, and I stiffened. Sensing it, she pulled back. "Sorry. Sorry, I - I never asked permission to touch you, did I? I just do it all the time. That's rude of me, isn't it?"

Surprised, I glanced at her. "It's okay."

"No, it's not okay. It's intrusive." She looked down at the toes of her boots half buried in the snow. "I'll quit."

"No, please." I put a hand up to my forehead. I wasn't sure how to say what I wanted to, but I didn't want her to stop. "I like it." And boy, that came out wrong. It sounded almost like a come-on, which I certainly hadn't meant. "It's okay. Really. Just sometimes . . . sometimes there's . . . I don't know . . . ." I trailed off, frustrated. I couldn't look at her. "But it doesn't bother me, not like you mean."

How does one explain, _Please don't stop touching me because you do it with such kindness and I'm not used to that, but I like it more than I can say_? It was too tender. I could barely acknowledge that in my own head, much less articulate it aloud. All I could verbalize was, "Please, don't stop."

And now neither of us seemed to know what to say or where to look. She gestured towards the house. "I'll go on back and leave you alone." But her tone sounded on the edge of breaking and I looked up. Her cheeks were bright (though whether with embarrassment or the cold, I couldn't tell), and her shoulders had slumped. Ever since that day in the mall, things between us hadn't been as easy, spoiled by too much knowledge on my part and a certain caution on hers. We'd been trying to ignore it, but it felt as if a chasm yawned between us and I didn't like that. I wanted her to go, yet I didn't - not on this note.

"Jean." She glanced back, but I couldn't quite manage, _Stay_. So instead, I asked, "Are you going to be around all evening? We could order out pizza and watch movies in the den."

It was a plea for everything to go back to the way it had been, what I was familiar with, not this strange new world I'd entered that might require me to have a future. I'd once thought I wanted more life, but then had realized how much effort it would take to live instead of merely exist. Dying was easier. There was nothing I had to work too hard at because it would all be over soon. I hadn't really accepted my death - I'd _embraced_ it. The boy who'd once been too stubborn to die had become too chicken to live. Living was _hard_.

Abruptly, I sat down in the snow, arms wrapped around my knees. Jean hurried back over to kneel beside me. "Scott, what is it?"

But I couldn't explain; I'd started rocking back and forth. I couldn't feel anything. The cold was everywhere and Jean's voice sounded as if it came from a long way off. "Scott! Scott, what's happening?"

I was a little surprised when she shook me, but it worked to snap me out of it. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry," she was saying. "But you went all white, and you weren't answering at all . . ."

"It's too big," I choked out, forehead pressed to knees, no longer disconnected - just scared. "It's too big. I don't know how to live. It's too big." She hesitated a minute, then wrapped her arms around me and just held on; I was reminded of the night she'd come after me when my mutation had first manifested. Jean's fearless that way. She'd bullied her way into my life, won me over despite myself, gentled me to her touch, then proceeded to make her friendship indispensable to me. For all that the rest gave me, when I was at the very end of my tether, it was Jean and only Jean who could haul me back. I could be weak with her in a way I couldn't with the others because they were all male - and deep down, I was afraid of them. Still.

She was holding me very tight and stroking my hair, not saying anything. Finally, I shifted a little and pulled away. She let me. "I don't know what I'm going to do," I said.

"What do you mean?"

"With my life. I don't know what I'm going to do. I didn't think I'd have to figure it out."

She stroked my cheek with one mittened hand. We were still half-sitting, half-kneeling in the snow by the wall. "I don't think you have to decide right now. Besides, most people don't know what they want to do with themselves at seventeen." Reaching up, she hooked a palm around the back of my head and pulled me near until our foreheads touched. "You know, being scared of the future is pretty normal for a high school senior."

That brought me to a full mental stop. I hadn't been thinking about my feelings in any kind of context. My personal situation was so strange that I tended to forget I could feel the same as others my age, but Jean was right. I _was_ a high school senior, however odd the circumstances, and now I had a reason to think about SAT scores and colleges and career counseling - and the very _mundanity_ of that brought a certain comfort. I could be like everyone else, at least in some ways.

"You want to go back in?" she asked finally. "Hank is still down in the sub-basement, and Charles is with him. It'll just be us."

I eyed her. "They're staying away because you told them to."

"Well, yeah. But they're also going over the test results and your medical charts. You presented Hank with quite a puzzle, y'know. He'll be as happy as a bug in a rug for at least a month, trying to figure it out."

I laughed at that, but let her pull me to my feet. I felt better. "So," I said as we headed back, arm in arm, "you want that pizza?"

She swatted at me. "What is it with you and pizza?"

"What's wrong with pizza?"

And so it went. Things were, if not back to normal between us, at least on the mend. That evening we shared the couch to watch _Xena: Warrior Princess_, me leaning against one arm and her against the other, our feet warring over the middle. She looked up to ask, "Are you sure it's okay? The touching thing?"

I glanced over. "I told you, it's fine." Light from the TV and from the fire behind the grate flickered over her face and caught in her eyes, making them glow. I hesitated, then added, "But thanks for asking."

"I'm sorry I didn't before."

I shrugged, and a few minutes of silence followed as we watched the end of the show, but when the commercial break came, I said, "When I tense up sometimes - it doesn't have anything to do with you."

"I know. But I don't want to make you uncomfortable."

"You don't."

"Okay."

We kept watching TV until the wee hours when she fell asleep, lulled by the program buzz and the fire's warmth and the late hour. I got up to prod the logs in the fireplace with a poker. They were burning down and I considered adding another, but it was very late. Time for bed. I was just reluctant to give up the day. That was when I heard the distinctive whoosh of the elevator opening out in the hallway, and the hum of the professor's chair. I wondered if he'd come in or pass by, and which of those did I want? Then I felt the light brush of his mind on mine, a wordless query. He was letting me choose.

Rising, I put the poker away and went out to meet him instead of asking him to enter. He was sitting in the dark hallway not far from the elevator, but I couldn't discern more than the shadow of his form. "Jean fell asleep," I said softly, leaning up against the wall across from him, my hands in my pockets.

"How are you?" he asked. It was direct yet vague enough that I could choose how to answer.

"I don't know," I replied, honestly. "I don't know if I can do this."

"Life happens day by day, Scott. No differently than before."

"But I don't have the luxury of just thinking day to day anymore."

He considered that. "Perhaps," he allowed. "But we can spend so much time thinking of the future, we forget to live. Mortality has a way of focusing the mind on the things that matter. One learns how to be alive, when walking in the valley of the shadow of death. But once you leave the valley, don't forget the lesson. No matter how long our life may be, we still live it day by day."

"I guess."

"Go to bed, Scott. You're still recovering from the flu and need your rest."

"What about Jean -?"

"I'll wake her and send her to bed, too."

"Okay."

"Goodnight, son."

"'Night."

I went upstairs and, in the morning, woke to the rest of my life.

* * *

><p><strong>Notes:<strong> _Vita dalla morte_ = life from death. Available AIDS tests changed in the mid '90s, particularly 1995-96. This story takes place in late '94. Many thanks to Cyclops&Phoenix, Crys, Ally W, and now particularly Leslie, for help with AIDS, viruses and bacteria generally, and how Scott's power conversion might affect them. Ally beta-red the story, and Leslie answered endless questions from me, spending time tracking down information for me and explaining virology in simple terms to someone who isn't an immunologist.


	12. Shadows on the Cave Wall

A number of things changed when the grim reaper disappeared from my immediate horizon, although none of them happened immediately. It was only in retrospect that I understood that fall and winter to be my fruition. I'd been like bread left in the dark and warmth to rise; Xavier's had become my sanctuary and I'd folded in on myself, admitting only those who'd insisted on entry, like Warren and Jean. I just wasn't much interested in the exterior world. I was too busy trying to rebuild the interior one.

But the court decision (far more than my 'miracle medical moment') had opened a window, been a confirmation that sometimes there is justice in the world. Defeating HIV had been an unlooked-for-quirk of my mutation, not the result of anything I'd done. Lady Luck had smiled on me. But the court case - we'd fought for that, _I'd_ fought for that, and in the end, they'd listened. The judge had asked _me_. I felt as if some power taken from me at eight had finally been returned, and with it came new responsibility.

So I learned to drive. Hank had been teaching me, but irregularly, and I just hadn't had much motivation. For one thing, I'd rarely ventured off the estate except at the insistence of someone else, who'd also provided transportation. The few times I had gone into North Salem alone, I'd called a cab. But I decided I wanted a license, so I took a driving course in order to get one before I turned eighteen. (New York is peculiar that way.) Xavier said that if I passed, I could have one of the cars in the garage for my own - tag and title in my name. I chose an antique Corvette, mostly because it needed work. Xavier may have given me the car, but I bought all the parts to restore it myself.

That was the other new element in my life - my orphan's benefits and parent's life insurance had been turned over to me. Xavier had been saving it since he'd taken temporary custody of me, and now it was mine. On a visit to New Haven, Warren and I sat down to discuss how to invest it. He swims through the stock market like a fish. Partly, it's what he was born to, but he's also plain good at it. He underestimates himself. Both of us can assemble pictures from small clues - we just assemble different pictures. Economics makes sense to him in the same way that numbers and geometry make sense to me. I'd have handed him my finances in entirety, but he insisted on teaching me. "I want you to know what I'm doing and why, Scott. It's your money." So I suffered through it, more because he enjoyed the telling than because I wanted to learn.

Yet it's peculiar what a difference control of your own mobility and your own income makes. Before, I'd been too old for my years, but childlike in my powerlessness. Even after I'd left the street, my life had been hemmed in by the will of others, mostly with my own acquiescence. I'd drifted, just beginning to understand I was allowed to have wishes and designs myself.

But after I got a license and a car, and a checking account, restlessness took over. Sometimes I drove the Westchester county roads just because they were there - no destination. I was reverting to the behavior of a normal seventeen-year-old, and giving me back some power had given me back a little of the childhood that had been stolen from me. While hardly wild by most definitions, in light of how I'd _been_, I'd turned positively rebellious, wasting days doing nothing at all or leaving the mansion without saying where I was going or when I'd be back. It wasn't the same defiance I'd shown when I'd first arrived; that had arisen from distrust. This was a testing of boundaries, me trying to decide if I were ready to fly alone. Thankfully, Xavier didn't ride me too hard. If anything, he seemed amused.

I also developed an interest in other, smaller things I hadn't had the courage to try before. I sat down one day at the piano in the den, opened the cover, and tried picking out tunes by ear. My mother had played; I wanted to learn. Hank heard me and came to watch, sitting down beside me on the bench to point out middle-C and the notes in black and white - my teacher once again. "You have a good ear, Scott." I wasn't the musician he was and never would be, but I learned to read music, and sometimes he played for me to sing.

_In this world there's a whole lot of trouble, baby,  
>In this world there's a whole lot of pain,<br>In this world there's a whole lot of trouble, but  
>A whole lot of ground to gain.<br>Why take when you could be giving,  
>Why watch as the world goes by?<br>It's a hard enough life to be living,  
>Why walk when you can fly?<em>

At Christmas, Warren came back to the mansion and we spent it together like the year before, just the two of us and the professor. They went to midnight Mass with me because I asked, and Warren wasn't drunk. I still didn't take the sacrament, but that wasn't why I'd gone. When we returned home in the wee hours of Christmas morning, Warren and I walked out onto the winter-dead lawn to see the lights. It was cold, but not unbearable, and Warren had those white wings spread, breaking the wind. "You want to go flying?" he asked abruptly.

"I'm not ready," I blurted, and wasn't sure if that was my fear speaking, or some instinctive wisdom not to push too fast. I glanced at Warren. "I know it's been a couple months -"

"You don't need to apologize." But I could tell he was disappointed anyway.

"You probably think I'm dragging my heels."

"No, I don't."

We were silent a while. I had my hands in my pockets, rummaging in my mind for something to say. Finally, I bowed my head. "This is so fucking _frustrating_! Let's just do it, okay?"

"Scott -"

"Let's just do it. I am so sick and tired of being fucking afraid all the time."

"No."

It was firm, and I looked up at him, at the side of his face. He wasn't looking at me. "No," he said again. "You being mad at yourself isn't the time to do it. You'd force yourself to. I don't want that. I want you to have fun."

I smiled faintly. We went inside and had warm apple cider instead.

But one question continued to hang over my head - was I going to college, or wasn't I? And if so, where? Xavier refrained from pushing, though Warren and Jean didn't. Even Hank prodded me a little, and being stubborn, I dug in heels and refused to discuss the matter because they were insisting. In truth, I was simply afraid. Getting into college meant the possibility of failure. I hadn't been in a formal classroom or received a grade since I was fourteen.

"I'm not sure I'm even ready for college," I admitted to Xavier in February around Valentine's Day when the first hint of spring warmed the air. We were sitting on the balcony to his private rooms.

"That depends on what you mean," he said, puffing on his pipe. "Academically? Most certainly you are. Essentially, you're doing college-level work now, and really should plan to take some AP tests, come May. But that doesn't mean you're ready in other respects. There is no rush." He smiled. "Whatever Warren would have you think."

"He wants a roommate. Like he thinks I can get into Yale!"

"He's lonely. But you have spent enough of your life predicated by the needs and desires of others. You bow to them unconsciously sometimes, even while resenting it." He was silent a moment, smoking, then said, "If you want to know what I think, I think you need to spend some time on your own - and not necessarily at college."

I wasn't at all sure what he meant by that. Was he kicking me out already?

"Most certainly not." He had a habit of unconsciously answering my unspoken thoughts. I'd long ago realized that he wasn't reading them on purpose; it was just that sometimes I thought _loudly_ and I wasn't sure he entirely realized I hadn't verbalized the thought. "Yet I wonder if you might not benefit from time on your own?"

"I've _been_ on my own, professor," I pointed out.

"Yes - too young. As a result, you wound up at the mercy of others. Perhaps it's time for you to return to Nebraska on your own terms. Or even Alaska."

Everything in me rebelled. "Do I have to?"

"Of course not. Merely something to think about."

I sank down in my balcony chair and changed the subject.

My problem was that I resisted change instinctively. In the past, it had rarely been good and the possibilities that were opening in front of me were more frightening than exciting. I didn't want my life to change, even while I knew change inevitable. We were all facing it, except Warren. I was finishing high school, Jean was finishing college, and Hank was finishing his residency. It was a pregnant time. Yet Jean and Hank looked forward to it while I resisted. I hadn't even taken the required standardized tests, and it was already too late to do so if I wanted to meet application deadlines for the better colleges and universities. Rather than make a conscious choice, I'd let ennui choose for me.

Late that same February, while visiting B. Dalton's in Yorktown, I wandered into the study guide aisle. The SAT prep texts stared back at me, accusatorially. I couldn't resist taking a peek; no one was around to see. I found myself surprised.

If the sample tests were any indication of what the real test was like, it wasn't half as hard as I'd thought - and I was reminded of my experience at Columbia. Out of the study guide's vocabulary list, I came up with only 19 words I couldn't define at least partially. Being a bookworm had certain benefits. Closing the book at last, I returned it to the shelf, left and drove back to the mansion. The professor was working in his office, his door open. I knocked on the jamb, though I was sure he knew I was there. "Yes, Scott?" he said without looking up.

"How do I sign up for an SAT test?"

His smile was faint, but definite. "The next available date falls in the last week of March. Regular registration is past, but we can still make the late deadline." He turned to me then. "The tests are given on Saturdays in the cafeteria at New Salem High."

I nodded. He'd obviously already done the homework, just been waiting for me to indicate that I wanted to try. "I guess I can see how I do," I said.

"I guess you can."

So I took the SAT I on a sunny and mild Saturday morning in late March, and filled out the appropriate score sheet oval that, yes, I did want to hear from colleges. How odd to mark that, and even more so to be taking this test beside others my age. I felt so much older than most of them. A few stared when I sat down at one of the long cafeteria tables and didn't remove my 'sunglasses,' but I ignored the looks to lay out my number-two pencils by my travel mug full of coffee. Nonetheless, my hands shook as I accepted a test form.

_Put it out of your mind_, I thought. At least the first section was quantitative. I whipped through, finished early, then began checking answers while I waited for time to be called. We had a brief break and I put my head down on the tabletop, arms stretched across it to grip the edge.

"You nervous?" asked a girl beside me, or rather, two seats over to give the requisite testing space.

I looked up. "Just tired," I lied.

"Where do you go to school? Not here."

"A private school nearby." Well, more or less.

"You a junior, too?"

"No."

"You taking the test again, then?"

"No."

She seemed baffled by my replies, but the examiners were telling us it was time for the second section. I avoided looking at her after that, though I was fairly sure she tried to catch my eye once or twice. I preferred my own company.

By the time the exam was over, I was mentally exhausted in a way I hadn't been in a long time. Shoulder's slumped, I walked out to my car and lit a smoke. I needed it to calm down. "Hey," I heard behind me, and jumped, startled.

It was the girl. I hadn't really looked at her before, not to notice details, but now I did. She had pinched aristocratic features, a perky nose, and hair that was not-quite-blonde, though with my glasses, it was hard to be sure of the color. She was pretty, I supposed, but not beautiful like Jean with her clean lines of face. She gestured to my car. "That yours?"

"Yeah."

"Wow. Did your dad buy it for you?"

Something, something . . . The lowered eyes, a slight flush to the cheeks. I put the cigarette to my mouth and drew hard, pulling it away abruptly to blow out. She was flirting with me.

"My dad is dead," I said, and her eyes got wide, her mouth opening slightly. "It was a long time ago," I went on, "so don't offer pity." That was rude and I knew it, but I didn't want her to flirt with me. I pulled out my keys to open the Corvette's door.

"What's your name?" she asked.

"Scott," I replied, annoyed. I didn't ask her for hers. She gave it anyway.

"I'm Lady."

I glanced around. It was just past noon and the spring sun fell on her skin as fair as porcelain. "That's a name?"

Her smile was dimpled and probably made the boys in her school light-headed. "Well, my real name's Julia, but I never get called that."

"I like Julia better."

"So what school _do_ you go to?"

"Xavier's."

"Never heard of it."

"It's new."

"Ah." She watched me expectantly, one hand gripping her purse strap on her shoulder. She had barrettes in her hair and her shoes were neat and without scuff marks. I'm not sure why I noticed these things. I started to get into the car. "You want to go get something to eat?" she asked.

I looked over again. Her face was positively flaming now and I doubted she'd ever asked out a boy in her life - had probably never needed to - and for a long moment, I considered her proposition. Xavier wouldn't mind, and it'd be a chance for me to try on being normal.

But that was just the problem, wasn't it? I'd only be trying. "Thanks," I told her, "But I've got somewhere else I need to be." And I shut the door.

Yet I thought about her on the drive back home and for most of the rest of the day. "So how'd it go?" Jean asked before supper. She'd caught me in the main hall downstairs.

"What?"

"The test, dingbat!"

"Fine. It went fine. Pretty easy, really. I met a girl."

Just like that, I spit it out. Jean whipped her head around. "A _girl_?"

"Well, kinda."

"What do you mean 'kinda'?" She was laughing, but lightly.

"I talked to this girl who sat nearby, and she followed me out to my car afterwards, asked if I wanted to go get something to eat."

Jean's jaw dropped, then she practically squealed in excitement. "Did you go?"

"Well, no. Why would I? I didn't know her."

"Scott! Was she pretty?"

"I guess." I didn't add my private thought - _not as pretty as you_. "I didn't know anything about her, Jean, except that her name's Julia but she gets called Lady - which is kind of stupid, if you asked me."

"You turned down lunch with a pretty girl because you didn't know her?"

"Yeah, so? Why would she be interested anyway?"

"Uh!" It was a wordless noise of disgust. "Think about it! Maybe she wanted to _get_ to know you. Some good-looking, mysterious boy shows up at her school to take the SAT test -"

"And what? I'm fresh meat?"

She blinked. "You don't have to put it so crudely. You're a fresh _face_ - tall, dark and handsome."

"Fuck," I muttered and left her standing in the hallway, calling back, "I'm not tall!" I didn't bother to correct the rest. It'd be a lie.

After supper, she tracked me down again in the billiards room. "What made you so mad earlier?"

I finished the shot I'd been lining up, taking out my frustration on the cue ball, then walked over to where she stood under a Tiffany lamp. "Before" - it was how I spoke of my time on the street - "nobody wanted _me_. They wanted a fantasy. Half the time, they didn't even ask my name. At least this chick asked my name. But I don't like being beefcake."

Her face had crumpled into pain. "I'm sorry."

"I don't want someone who just wants a pretty face and body." And abruptly, I thought of the girls I looked at sometimes - nameless and cut out from any identifying context. I only wanted their faces and bodies, too.

I was a hypocrite.

Angry and confused, I stalked over to shove the pool cue back into the rack. "I'm going to bed."

"Scott -"

I ignored her. But I couldn't stay in my room, either. It was early by my standards. After an hour and a half, I came back downstairs. I should find Jean and apologize, so I paced down the dim hallway, illumined irregularly with low-wattage wall lamps throwing umbrellas of light on oriental runners. Jean was nowhere to be found, not in the den, the dining room, the kitchens, the billiard room, the arboretum. I'd given up and was headed back to bed, moving quietly up the grand staircase, when the door to Xavier's office opened and Jean emerged. I halted, my mouth open to speak, but the words just collected on my tongue and froze there. "Thanks, Charles," she was saying, having paused in the doorway. "Sometimes I just don't know what to do. Everything I tell him seems to come out wrong."

"Patience, my dear." The voice was barely audible. "Healing is a process, and when he strikes out, he's not necessarily striking out at you."

"I know. It's just _frustrating_! I wish I knew what to answer."

"You do very well. And your presence may matter more than your words."

She sighed. It was explosive in the shadows. I held very still, almost afraid to breathe. They were talking about me. I was sure of it. "Is it normal to want to wring his neck sometimes?"

A chuckle came from inside the office. "Perfectly. Healing is difficult work. So is being around the survivor. We all need to vent, Jean."

"Thanks."

"You're welcome."

She turned and moved out into the hall, and now what did I do? Conflicting desires rose up in me - to flee, or to confront her.

In the end, the choice was taken out of my hands. I must have made some sound, for she glanced up. "Scott?"

"Yeah."

A pregnant pause. She was probably blushing but I couldn't tell. "How long have you been standing there?"

"Long enough. Come up." I finished climbing the stairs. There was a sitting room on the second floor that had been a solar once. I turned on the light inside and stood at the room's center, facing the door. She came through it with a tentative step. "You could've talked to me, you know," I said.

"Scott, I -"

"Why didn't you talk to me!" I was suddenly furious. "I thought we were friends?"

"We are," she said softly, flinching.

"So you run around talking about me behind my back?"

"Mostly I talk about _me_." She was looking down at the floor, but sideways so I could see her profile. Her short hair fell soft, half obscuring it. "You're not always easy to deal with, you know. Maybe I need some help." She sighed out. "Sometimes I don't know what to say. I want to say the right thing."

"Say what you want to say! I don't want you to lie!"

"It's not lying. I've never lied to you. I promise."

That mollified me a little. "So what do you mean, wanting to say the right thing?"

She was rubbing her hands together. "I have no idea what you're going through. I don't want to blunder around in the metaphorical dark and hurt you."

I understood, but I still felt mildly betrayed. "Why didn't you tell me you were talking to him?"

"I didn't want you to worry. Sometimes I need to talk to Charles to get my own head together." I watched her a moment as she pushed hair behind her ears and glanced at me, then glanced away.

"Knowing that helps," I told her.

"Really?"

"Yeah." I continued to watch her. "Sometimes you seem so . . . I don't know. Perfect."

She burst out laughing, but it was dark and had an edge of hysteria. "God, no! I'm always terrified I'm going to screw up and make you hate me!"

"I won't hate you. And I'm not going to crack. You can talk to me, too. If you're pissed off at me, say so. "

"But sometimes you _need_ to be pissed off and not worry about it."

"Being mean to my friends isn't what I want, okay? I'm mean because . . ." I trailed off and stared at my reflection in a gilded mirror over the fireplace mantel. "Fuck. I have no idea why."

"I understand, Scott -"

"Would you stop it! Just stop!" The words made her flinch again. "That's what I mean! I don't need a martyr. I need a friend." And yet, I wondered. I might need friends, but I didn't really know how to be one. It had taken Jean - and Warren and Hank - _pushing_ their way into my life before I made room for them. And it occurred to me now that maybe they'd had help in figuring out that they needed to push. All of them must have been talking to Xavier about how to _handle_ me, and that hurt.

"Why are you doing this?" I asked her finally, and began pacing, gesturing a little wildly as I spoke. "I don't understand. You, Warren, Hank. I beat up on you verbally and you just keep coming back for more. Why? It's not like I have anything to offer really, and you never ask me for anything, either. I just don't get it. So why? Does he pay you - the professor? But even Xavier - I don't understand why _any_ of you put up with me! What good am I?"

Jean had wrapped her arms around herself and was weeping quietly. "God, Scott. Can't you _hear_ yourself?"

"Of course I hear myself!"

"How can you really _think_ those things?

"How can I _not_?"

And something switched in her expression, her sorrow transforming into truculent rage. "You are so pig-headed sometimes! We tell you and we tell you and you just _don't listen_! You have some idiotic idea that you're not worth anything! It makes me so damn mad, I just want to hit you! You _are_ worth something, you stubborn son of a bitch!"

Picking up a heavy glass bookend shaped like a horse's head, she hurled it at me, and I ducked instinctively as it crashed into the paneling behind, cracking the wood. Her hands had gone up to her mouth and her eyes were huge. "Oh, god, Oh, god, Oh, god. I'm so sorry. That was . . . Oh, god, Scott. Are you okay?"

I just blinked, unsure what I felt. Astonished, certainly. But another part of me was plain amused, and I realized I wasn't _scared_ of her. She could've brained me with the thing, and for a moment, I'd been scared of that . . . but not scared of _her_. The distinction was enormously important to me. Nonetheless, I did feel relief to have my skull intact, and started laughing. She just continued to stare. "It's okay," I told her. "Well, maybe not. I think you broke the wall" - which sent me into gales of laughter - an emotional release. After a minute, a little of her horror bled away and she began to giggle, too.

"I did, didn't I?" But then she sobered. "I am sorry. I could've really hurt you."

"Yeah," I managed, between spurts of giggles. "But you didn't." Finally I calmed down and slumped into a chair, head back, forearms resting on the sides, legs akimbo. "You looked as pissed as a wet cat."

She sat down, too, in the chair opposite mine. "I was." And a hardness returned to her eyes, a pinching at the corners in anger and a narrowing of her nostrils. "I don't like people insulting my friends - and you were insulting you."

My lips tipped up more. "I still don't see why you like me."

"Because you're funny - you've got this wicked sense of humor that cracks me up. And because you've got a brain and aren't afraid to use it. You're incredibly smart, but you've got common sense. I know a lot of smart people, but not many are _pragmatic_. You notice things most people don't, too - it's like you know the real value of things. Sometimes you drive me up a wall, but usually it's because you won't take yourself seriously, or you put yourself down. Scott - you're _unique_. You really are."

I'd blushed and turned my head away. I had no idea what to say, so I said nothing.

"I'm not sure there's really a reason _why_ I like you - I just do. But those are some of the things about you that I like."

I pondered her phrasing. "But I give you hell."

"Sometimes. And you've been through hell. I understand."

"Don't play the martyr, Jean. I want you to tell me when I'm being a son of a bitch. Just . . . don't toss bookends at my head again, okay?"

She went red once more. "I really shouldn't have done that. You've had people abuse you -"

"Stop it. I'm not scared of you. You were really pissed off, and maybe it helps a little for me to see you really pissed off. You get mad at me, but most of the time, you're so understanding I want to puke. I know that sounds ungrateful, but . . . I dunno." I stopped and sighed, rubbing at my eyes under my glasses. I spoke haltingly, trying to articulate a frustration I was only beginning to recognize. "It's always one-way. I guess that's it. You don't let me do anything for _you_. That's why I feel like your project. Friends do things for each other, but you're always doing for me. It's like you don't _need_ anything from me."

She seemed quite taken aback, as if this were a new concept for her. "But you shouldn't have to do anything for me. I wasn't the one who suffered - "

"It's not _about_ that, dammit! You're not my fucking counselor!"

"I'm not trying to be - "

"Yes, you are! Maybe not consciously, but that's what you're trying to be!" I got up and began pacing again. "You worry about saying the right thing, doing the right thing, _being_ the right thing. Even the professor doesn't do that to me! He lets me do stuff." They were often small things, in the grand scheme, true, but they were still requests. 'Scott, would you fetch me some tea from the kitchen?' 'Scott, would you put out food for the cats?' 'Scott, would you bring me socks from my room? Wool, please.' The normal give-and-take of living in the same house. I kept him company and he trusted me to take care of him sometimes. It made me proud. Yet Jean let me to do nothing for her, and that kept me dependent.

Now, she said, "I just didn't want to put anything more on you. You've got so much to deal with as it is . . . "

I almost threw up my hands. "Jesus, Mary and Joseph! Didn't it ever occur to you that I might _like_ to focus on somebody other than me? That it might _help_? All this self-involved navel-gazing crap is _crap_! I want to feel like I have some goddamn purpose besides being an object for pity. If I'm your friend, then let me _act_ like one, please!"

She was still staring. "I didn't . . . I didn't . . ." She seemed at a complete loss for words. "I didn't want you to . . . to have to . . . _carry_ me, I guess. Or worry about me. Or - "

"You've said that three or four times now. Shut up already." But my words came without heat, and surprised, she shut up. "Stand up." She was looking at me as if I'd lost my mind, but did as I ordered. Walking over to her, I bent quickly to sweep her feet out from under her with one arm and then catch her as she fell back against my other arm.

"Whoa!" She grabbed for my neck, and I shifted her a little to get a firmer grip but didn't let her fall, balancing her in my arms.

"There. I'm strong enough to carry you." Or at least strong enough to pick her up. I doubted I could carry her far. She was taller than me. But my point was proved. I set her back on her feet. "Let me, okay?"

She was almost laughing. "Okay," she agreed.

"It makes it easier for me to tell you stuff if you tell me stuff," I explained, more seriously. "When we first met, you did that. But for the last year - since you found out the truth about me - you've stopped. I need to feel like you need me."

She studied me a moment with a somewhat perplexed smile, brows drawn together a bit, but then she agreed again, "Okay."

* * *

><p>It was around the same time that my status with regard to HIV came up again. I'd been off the drug cocktails since late November, but whatever their tests had said then, there was still the possibility they had been wrong. As Hank had explained, HIV was a tricky virus and I might never be completely free of it, though Hank remained convinced that I'd never get AIDS itself because my body would kill any free virus before it could infect new cells. Nonetheless, it was now time to test his theory and give me another battery of tests. He figured that four months would be long enough for any residual viral repression from the drugs to have cleared. If I still showed no active virus in my blood, then his theories about my mutation were correct. I was killing it. But if the virus had reappeared . . . .<p>

So it wasn't a pleasant Saturday for me. I didn't share Hank's optimism; I'd been broadsided too often by life and spent most of that morning in front of the television, trying to distract myself. Xavier had joined me and was rather unsuccessfully attempting to elicit my opinion regarding the purchase of a new horse for the stables. Unfortunately, I didn't feel knowledgeable enough about horseflesh, or able to focus long enough, to have an opinion. I wished vaguely for Jean's presence but Jean wasn't at the mansion that weekend. In her final semester at Columbia with graduation a little over a month away, she had projects and papers due. Yet she'd made me promise to call as soon as I found out the results.

Sometime shortly after noon, Hank emerged from his downstairs dungeon to bound into the den and announce, "Our theories were correct! No sign of the virus, Scott, or at least, not in your blood."

My relief was so strong it felt like a physical drop in my gut as muscles relaxed that I hadn't even realized were tensed. "But it's still there," I said. "The virus."

"Yes, HIV infects some cells that have a very long half life, the resting memory T-cells."

"Okay. But what exactly does that _mean_, Hank? Pragmatically."

"It means you're a carrier, but any cell-free virus is rapidly destroyed - prevented from becoming active - by your body's UV conversion process."

"So I _could_ still infect others?"

Hank frowned at that. "Unlikely, but yes, still possible. I wouldn't advise giving blood, nor engaging in unprotected intercourse, but I do think your risk factor is low enough to dispense with special precautions for normal bio-hazard trash. Throw your tissues away, of course, but I see no reason to put it in baggies under normal circumstances. When you're out where others might come into unexpected contact with it, then perhaps more discretion is in order."

The warning not to give blood I'd expected, but Hank's casual inclusion of sex threw me, and my back stiffened. Xavier - who'd been listening with quiet interest - noticed of course, and he unlocked his chair's wheels, setting it in motion. "I can't say I'm surprised by the news, but I am relieved. I do, however, have a conference call at three, so I'll leave the two of you to discuss the details." I watched him go, wondering whether he really had the conference call or if Hank had mentally asked him to leave. Or perhaps he'd just decided I might discuss private matters more easily one-on-one. Truth was, I didn't want to discuss private matters at all, or not beyond what to do with used Q-Tips, Kleenex and Band-Aids.

"Thanks," I said now to Hank, and stood up. "It was the bio-hazard stuff I was worried about. The other two . . . ." I trailed off and shrugged. "Not something to worry about. Don't plan to give blood or have sex." And on that note, I turned to leave.

"The former is hardly a human universal," I heard behind me, spoken quietly, "but the latter falls into rather a different class. We never know what the future will hold, Scott."

Turning back, I glared, although the effect was lost behind my glasses. "I had enough sex in my past to last a lifetime of futures, thanks."

He didn't reply immediately, just rose himself and shuffled the papers he'd brought but hadn't actually shown me, a clear 'buy some time to think' action, or perhaps simple hesitation at stepping into the breach. "I do believe," he said finally, "that there's a world of difference between what you suffered on the street and what you might one day enjoy if you fall in love."

"That coming from your vast experience?"

It was a cruel thing to say. I knew - I _knew_ - that Hank could probably count his lovers on one hand, if he could count any at all. Warren and his wings were exotic, me and my glasses might be considered tragic, but Hank was just your garden-variety freak with oversized hands and feet and a slightly hirsute appearance with no fineness of feature to offset it. He was the kind of guy one called "beautiful on the inside," and maybe someday a woman would notice, if he ever bothered to come out of his lab long enough to get a social life. That hadn't happened yet though, and his shocked face showed me just how good my verbal aim had been. Without saying a word, he picked up the papers he'd been shuffling and walked past me out of the den.

"Dammit," I muttered and fell back against the door jamb. "You son of a mangy bitch." I didn't mean Hank.

When I walked out myself, I headed for Xavier's office, but he really was on the phone, so I went upstairs, spent five minutes in my room, each one weighing more heavily on me, and finally, gave up. Leaving again, I approached Hank's door and knocked. I figured he was back down in the lab, but unexpectedly, the door opened. "I'm sorry," I blurted without preamble. "I'm a jerk."

Hank didn't reply immediately, and I turned to go. "Scott, wait." He breathed out heavily. "I know that sex isn't a subject you want to discuss, and for valid reasons. I pushed too hard."

"Yeah, you did. But I'm still a jerk."

"Sometimes, indeed you are." His smile was faint, but real, and his straightforward response differed from Jean's excuses and apologies (however heartfelt), and thus, his forgiveness was easier for me to accept.

But I'd been raised Catholic, and real forgiveness included penance, or at least restitution, so I found myself asking, "Hank, do you like being a guy?" I'd made him vulnerable, and so I offered my own vulnerability in return.

The question caught him off guard. I could see his surprise and confusion, but he swallowed it and opened his door wider, indicating that I could come in. I accepted. His room was messy but comfortable, full of books and magazines and knickknacks. There was a chair beside the dresser and he dumped dirty clothes off of it so I could sit down while he sat on the bed, hands between his knees. We looked at each other a moment, then he said, "I never really thought about it. I've asked myself more than once if I like being a mutant, or like having an IQ they can't measure properly." He snorted. "But being male? Quite honestly, it never occurred to me to ask whether or not I liked it. I can't imagine being female, so I suppose that I do -"

"So you think being male is better than being female?" My question cut sharply into his reply, and I'd leaned back into the chair; this was almost like one of our usual debates except my belly churned with a vague hostility that wasn't a normal part of our intellectual ping-pong.

He must have sensed as much, for he eyed me curiously. "I didn't say that, did I? I said I find it hard to imagine myself as a woman. I fear I would make a rather unattractive one." His smile was sardonic. Then all humor fell away. "I think it's simply that I have other hypothetical 'what ifs' on which I focus my attention, starting with, 'What if I'd been born normal?'"

Conscience pricked a bit, I yielded ground. "Okay, fair enough. But doesn't it bother you, what some men do? As _men_, I mean. Rape - that kind of thing?"

"Of course it does. But I suspect some women are bothered by what other women do, as well. It's not about gender, Scott - it's about personal ethics."

"You don't think lust drives some men to - "

"No. I don't." His turn to interrupt me. "I think that's an excuse, and not even a very good one." His face was utterly serious. "While it's true that testosterone is a powerful hormone, and our penises may occasionally seem to have a life of their own, our most important sex organ remains our _mind_. We can convince ourselves of all manner of things, be trained like Pavlov's dogs to develop the most peculiar fetishes, to accept pain as pleasure, even to compartmentalize our sexuality or attempt to erase it."

I was suddenly too hot to move or speak or even to breathe, and I held very still, as if my immobility might cause his words to pass over me, like the frozen mouse is overlooked by a stalking cat.

"I believe the _mind_ - not the body - rules us," he continued. "A chemical imbalance in the body may make us ill or give us a craving, but a chemical imbalance in the brain can alter our entire behavior patterns. Mostly, though, _we_ choose, Scott. We have the capacity to choose."

"What if you don't?" The words burst out of me and I wanted to swallow my tongue, but it just ran away with me like a horse who had the bit caught in its teeth. "What if it's forced on you? You mentioned Pavlov's dogs, but nobody asked the _dogs_. It screws you up. Really screws you up, and there's no choice, Hank, and I can't not _think_ about it. When I start to feel . . . that . . . I can't not remember."

His face had quieted. "What we've been trained to can also be unlearned and substituted for something more positive."

"Easier said than done."

"Oh, most certainly. But you've already accomplished the impossible." A smiled played with his mouth. "You beat HIV."

"That wasn't through anything I did!" The humor angered me. "It was just chance."

His smile fled. "Perhaps so. Yet there is still much that you _did_ accomplish yourself - or we wouldn't be sitting here having this discussion. I think the key is to take each step as it comes, not look so far ahead that you're daunted. _Any_thing positive that you achieve is still an achievement, and in all areas of life, not simply your sexuality. Give yourself time."

I wasn't sure whether or not that constituted a cop-out. "Okay," I said, rising to head for the door, but I paused with my hand on the knob. "Can I ask you another question?" I couldn't look him in the face. "It's a little personal and you don't have to answer if you'd rather not."

"Go ahead."

"Do you masturbate?"

A very long silence followed that question, and although too ashamed to lift my eyes, I could imagine the consternation on his face. "Never mind," I said at the same moment that he replied, "Yes, I do."

A three-beat silence.

"Sexuality is still a powerful drive," he continued, "though unlike hunger, failing to satisfy it won't cause us to die, whatever it may feel like. And we can choose _how_ to satisfy it, whether in healthy or unhealthy ways. Masturbation is perfectly normal and healthy. I'm sure you've heard the old joke that 99% of all men masturbate, and the other one percent is lying."

"But I don't masturbate. And I'm not lying." My words weren't heated - they were mostly tired, in fact.

He didn't answer at first and I glanced up finally. His brows were drawn down, lips pursed, as if he couldn't decide whether to lecture me or philosophize. Finally, he settled on a question. "Why?"

I'd expected a lot of responses, but that wasn't among them. "Why would I want to?" I countered.

"The normal drives -"

"I told you - every time I think about . . . touching myself, it makes me sick to my damn stomach! It's disgusting." And my tongue ran away with me again. "The sex thing is just disgusting. I've seen what it makes men do. They act like fucking animals. And it's ridiculous. I mean, think about it, Hank. The whole goddamn sex act is fucking ridiculous. If you forget lust for a minute and look at it objectively, it's just nature's big-ass joke and I'd rather be left out of the punch line, okay? I don't need it. I'm not a slave to my goddamn body and I don't want to be."

The silence that followed this time was even longer than the first, and I wasn't sure if he'd answer at all, but finally, he spoke. "You are, of course, quite right, about the sex act appearing - in the cold light of reason - a rather peculiar thing to do with select parts of the anatomy. Hardly dignified. And yet, you spoke of it as nature's 'joke.' I prefer to think of it nature's reminder not to take ourselves too seriously, perhaps even nature's way of teaching us trust and intimacy."

My eyebrow went up at that, and he smiled at my reaction. "Humor me for a moment, Scott. You can find me unimaginably quaint later, if you wish, but at least hear me out."

I crossed my arms, but nodded once. "All right - shoot." I was afraid to appear too interested, but felt, in fact, quite curious.

There's an old story about two travelers approaching a village. The one taking the south road ran into a farmer traveling away from the village, and asked him what sort of people lived in the town up the road. The farmer replied that they were the worst sort in the world, always gossiping about others, cold and indifferent and inhospitable to strangers. The traveler took this in but went on to the village anyway, and found it just as the farmer had said. Meanwhile another traveler was approaching from the north, and he, too, ran into a farmer traveling away from the village. He asked that farmer the same question - what sort of people lived in the town down the road - and the farmer said they were delightful, friendly, and full of life. This traveler also went on to the village, and found it just as the farmer had said."

My arms were still crossed but I felt one corner of my mouth quirk up. "And the _point_ of this little tale is . . . ?" Actually, I had a good idea, but wasn't inclined to make it easy for him.

"We get out of an experience what we expect - and perhaps what our previous experiences have prepared us for. The very same act or event can be looked at by two different people in completely different ways - whether as revolting or arousing, humiliating or empowering."

"Yeah, so?" He was pretty much stating the obvious.

"There may come a time in your life when you see sex as a desired opportunity, not a situation to be avoided."

"Yeah, right!"

"If you fall in love - "

"Hank! Be realistic. Who in their right mind would be interested in me?"

"Warren, for one."

That stopped me cold, and Hank barreled on while my jaw was still hanging open. "Yes, I know you're not interested, but that doesn't change the fact that _he_ is, and that he cares for you very deeply, as a friend. What if Warren were female, Scott?"

My jaw shut with a snap. "He's not. And even if he was, I'm just . . . I'm not ready."

"I know. But there may come a day when you are ready - not for Warren, but for someone. Don't sell yourself short. None of us knows what the future will bring, and I have always been intrigued by the fact this act that brings us such great bodily pleasure also requires us to be physically naked and subject to vulnerable positions."

My reply was a snort. "You can have sex with your clothes on, Hank, and shoving your dick down somebody's throat isn't exactly vulnerable."

"Ah, but it is. The mouth into which one shoves does, after all, have _teeth_."

I'd expected neither the frankness nor the humor - though there had been times I'd considered using the afore-mentioned teeth. I hadn't because I'd feared for life and limb. "That only works if you know you can get away with it."

"Quite true, but my point still stands. An apparently 'dominant' position can, when looked at from a different angle, be a very vulnerable one. Does one approach the village from the north or the south? Is sex an act of taking or giving? Of subjugation and humiliation, or of wonder uncovered and trust shared?"

And I had absolutely no idea how to respond to that. It seemed very far away from and irrelevant to me. My doubt must have shown on my face, as he pressed on.

"Orgasm is an amazing physical function, you know - one that makes us healthier."

"Huh?"

"Quite true. Even if one doesn't count the emotional benefits of mutuality and shared physical closeness, or if one has only autoeroticism as an outlet, regular orgasms are still advantageous as they release physical tension in the body and affect the brain and limbic system - your emotional 'brain,' if you will. Among the other things that go on during arousal, the hypothalamus tells another part of your brain to release hormones into your blood: oxytocin, dopamine, endorphins, norepinephrine, plus estrogen and testosterone. Endorphins are a natural morphine that our brain secretes when we exercise, have sex, or simply remain in the company of someone we love - causing a feeling of well being and contentment. Dopamine and norepinephrine induce that giddy love high you experience, and dopamine stimulates production of oxytocin, which brings about emotional attachment. Orgasm itself causes rhythmic muscular contractions in the pelvic region and elevated oxytocin levels that sensitize our nerves. In short, we feel good, and if we share the experience with another, we may develop great attachment to them. Women require oxytocin to achieve arousal and orgasm, and men experience it particularly afterwards. So there is, in fact, a biological truth to the fact that women need love for sex, and men need sex for love."

I'd become accustomed to Hank's lectures and should probably have been alarmed by the fact I'd followed about eighty percent of what he'd just said. But it was the last line that lodged in my brain. "So you're saying men need sex to fall _in love_?"

"Well, no, of course not, but I am saying that sexual activity resulting in orgasm with a partner does result in increased attachment to that partner, yes. My real point, however, is that sexual activity and orgasm is _good_ for you, Scott, and on a number of levels from the emotional to the purely physical. It's even good for improved sleeping patterns." His smile was faint, and none of this was anything I'd heard before, either as a good Catholic boy or a hustler. Yet I'd known kids on the street who'd said the only useful thing they got out of sex (besides the cash) was orgasm. Myself, I'd always been too stubborn to give in unless I had to, to get paid.

So I left Hank's room without saying anything more, but didn't go back to mine and try his advice at giving myself a handjob. I wasn't prepared to accept entirely what he'd said. But as usual, he'd gotten me to think, and to think about sex in a way that wasn't largely negative for the first time in years.

What I did do was call Jean to give her the news about the test results. She squealed over the phone, then immediately followed the ear-splitting noise with, "But I knew that's what the results would be." The juxtaposition of enthusiasm and assurance amused me.

"I'm still dangerous," I told her.

I could almost see her shrug. "Not that much. I mean, yeah, Hank's right, you're still a carrier, but the chances of you passing it on casually are extremely small, Scott."

"How's the studying going?" I didn't want to talk about HIV.

She let me change the subject and we discussed schoolwork. But before she hung up, she asked, "So what are you going to do this summer?"

I'd grown so used to Jean, or Warren, asking what I was doing next year - with the implication I should be focusing on college - that this question about the short term took me by surprise. "I don't know. Same thing I did last summer?"

"Last summer you were catching up for losing two months of school. You're _graduating_, Scott. I think you've earned a summer vacation."

And the way she put that stopped my breath. I was graduating from high school, something I'd never expected to do, even if it didn't include _Pomp and Circumstance_ and cheap black robes but an HSED exam for high school equivalency. I was still getting a piece of sheepskin with my name on it (because Xavier was having one made) and a documented transcript - something I'd never actually seen until that very month. I _had_ been getting grades all along; Xavier just hadn't been showing them to _me_. "School is about an education," he'd explained, "not alphabet soup." And lest anyone assume he'd favored me, not all those grades were As.

"I don't know," I said again now. "I haven't thought about it."

"Well, think then."

But it wasn't summer vacation I pondered over the next few days, it was the fact that we'd reached the end of March, and a year ago, Jack Winters had attacked the mansion on the 29th. I'd killed three people that night when my power had manifested. Yet another anniversary for me to add to my list of "days to sleep in."

A week later on Sunday morning, I received a nearly incomprehensible phone call from Jean. She was sobbing so hard, I couldn't make out a thing she said except something about _Morocco_. Baffled, I told her to stay put at her apartment and drove into the city. New York traffic always set me on edge, and already concerned, I was quite strung up by the time I arrived. Misty Knight let me in, then disappeared, leaving me with a sobbing Jean sitting on the floor in front of the couch, a box of tissues on one side and a little pile of discarded white on the other. Walking over, I knelt in front of her and raised her chin. Her eyes were swollen and tears leaked out to dribble down her cheeks.

"What happened?"

"Almost twenty-two-years-old, and I'm _still_ not old enough to take a vacation on my own!" she spat. "It's a goddamn wonder they even let me _live_ somewhere other than under their roof!"

"What? Who?"

"My parents! They won't let me go overseas with Misty this summer!"

_Overseas? _"I didn't even know you were planning a trip."

"Well, it just came up this weekend. Misty wanted to go to Egypt and Morocco. And it got shot down within 48 hours, too."

Oh. That made me feel less out of the loop. "Don't they trust you?"

Sighing, she rested her chin on her drawn up knees. "It's not about trust. Or not like you mean. It's, you know, the whole 'she was in a sanitarium' thing." She made a vague, fluttery gesture with her fingers, and sensing that she was calming down finally, I shifted off my own knees to sit on the floor in front of her.

"What's the sanitarium got to do with it?"

Her lips thinned into something that might have been either a smile or grimace, I couldn't tell, and the spring sun fell through the window to sketch a filigree halo around her hair. "Mom and Dad worry that I'm _sheltered_ and _fragile_ and can't handle life if they don't throw down a red carpet in front of me and smooth out all the wrinkles before I step on it. That's why I'm living with Misty, you know. She's supposed to take care of me, keep me out of trouble. She's the future cop, after all. Not that they ever said that to _me_, but that's the deal."

I folded my hands together. "How do you know that, if they never said it to you?"

"I am a telepath, remember?" And it struck me that this was the first time in a long time that she'd revealed either sorrow or frustration in front of me. Well, except for the night I'd called her on keeping it to herself, and maybe that little discussion had made an impression. Picking up the box of Kleenex, I settled myself next to her, back against the couch, and looped an arm over her shoulders, pulling her against my side. That I felt so easy doing this struck me only later.

"You're not fragile," I told her. "Sheltered, yeah. Fragile, no."

She eyed me with a certain tolerant amusement. "Sheltered? Scott, I've been in hundreds of people's heads. I'm not sheltered."

I had to smile at that. "Yes, you are. Being in someone's head isn't the same thing as living it." She seemed almost offended, but I met her eyes calmly and she didn't say anything. "Yeah, you've seen stuff, but you knew how the story ended. Sorta. The person was still around to remember it. When you're living it, you don't know how it'll turn out."

"When you're living it _with_ someone, you don't know either, Scott. I experience all the same emotions."

I frowned. "There's a difference." It wasn't a very good answer, and I felt as if I were blundering around in the dark. What I wanted to say was very important for her to understand, but I didn't know if I had the right words. "It changes you. Things that happen to you change you. And fuck, I don't know, I guess even learning that something bad _can_ happen changes you, too - takes your innocence - but it's head knowledge. When it happens to you . . ." I trailed off. "Everything changes." I tapped my chest with my free hand. "You feel it. It's _inside_ you. It doesn't go away, and it just sits there and _rots_." I stopped again; my voice wouldn't work and I realized abruptly that I was shaking. Jean had realized it, too, and leaned across to hug me tightly. I hugged her back, and she held on for a long time, but I hadn't meant to make this about me. "It's okay," I said after a space.

"No, it's not," she whispered back, and I could hear in her voice that she was weeping a little. "It was arrogant of me, to talk like I knew what it was like for you, just because I'm a telepath."

And that really wasn't what I'd been aiming for. It also made me realize that I'd leapt to some conclusions myself. "Jean, stop." I pushed her away a little so I could see her face. "You may not know what it was like for me, but I don't know what it's like for you, either, to _be_ a telepath - to have to deal with everybody else's thoughts in my head without me asking for them, or wanting them . . . to have all my crap to deal with and theirs, too." I glanced away. "Maybe I should be the one apologizing. I mean, maybe you do know all that stuff."

She watched my face. "No, I think you're right. There is a difference." She settled back down beside me, her head resting on my shoulder companionably. "When the telepathy first came, I didn't know what was happening. I'd be walking down the street and all of a sudden, I was seeing things and hearing things that weren't there. It was like people were shouting but their mouths were shut and I wasn't even sure where it was _coming_ from. Imagine minding your own business and all of a sudden you've got this furious wife in your head, cataloguing all the things she pissed at her husband about, and all the rage she's feeling, too. It was like jumping in the middle of a movie . . . or really, like standing in the middle of an electronics store and all the TVs are set to a different channel."

I held very still and listened intently, my arm still around her shoulders. She'd never actually told me what telepathy felt like for her. At first, that silence had been a result of the nature of our exchanges - always so intellectual. We'd talked about ideas, but we hadn't talked about ourselves. Then she'd found out about my past, but not through my telling her, and we'd never discussed that, either. This was a gift, now, that she was laying in my hands. I held it carefully.

"I learned that the only way to shut off the other channels was to focus on one. I realize now that I was going into somebody else's mind and living whatever they were, though I didn't understand it at the time. I started reacting to things that weren't there, and sometimes I'd just go catatonic. It completely freaked out my family. I couldn't concentrate on being _me_. I just . . . wasn't there. I wound up diagnosed as severely schizophrenic, which just meant they didn't have a clue what was wrong with me. I acted like different people, but didn't react to the _outer_ world as those personalities - I was living in another world entirely. I wasn't 'Jean' any more. I didn't know who I was, and neither did anyone else.

"And yet, experiencing it telepathically wasn't the same as being there. I couldn't affect events. I've always been a receptive telepath more than an assertive one - meaning it's easier for me to _hear_ others than to impose my thoughts or desires on them. So it really _was_ like watching a TV show. I was just an observer, but felt things along with whomever was living it. Scary, really."

I nodded; it must have been. Maybe scarier, in its own way, than living it physically, because I'd had some control over what had happened to me, however minimal or transient.

"After a while, I figured out how to withdraw a little, so I wasn't feeling as much, and it was like reading a book, or seeing a movie - or a bit of both because I could see what was happening, but got all the internal thoughts, too. And if something turned too bad, too overwhelming, I'd just leave that 'story,' go on to something else. Mental channel surfing, I guess." She smiled and I echoed it.

"It can be addictive, living like that. It's very . . . vivid. Life is vivid. I was seeing things, doing things I'd never dreamed of. And it wasn't all bad. Most were just experiences I hadn't had yet, and maybe never would have. But I had them in my head, and that was safe. I wasn't physically threatened, and I'd figured that out at some level. Not consciously, but subconsciously, yeah. I'd go back to certain types of experiences - I'd learned how to look for them, pick them out. And I'd figured out how to avoid others, too. I became an adrenaline junkie, and I didn't even have to be in danger to get that high."

She finally glanced over at me. "The things that drew me weren't necessarily what you'd think. I mean, I wasn't even a teenager yet. Sex and all that -" She flittered her fingers again as she had when speaking of the sanitarium, and wrinkled her pretty nose. I simply nodded, understanding perfectly. When I'd first been forced into prostitution, puberty had barely hit for me. I'd been a skinny, very pretty, slow-to-mature fourteen-year-old boy, sex something I'd only dimly wondered about . . . very nebulous. Then I'd been thrown in over my head and I hadn't been ready to know what I'd learned. So it didn't surprise me at all if Jean had shied away from sexual encounters.

She continued now, "It was adventure that caught my fancy. I'd float around mentally until I found someone doing something _interesting_, then I'd tag along for the ride. Sometimes it backfired." She shivered once. "I got shot. Well, the cop whose head I was in got shot." She shivered again and I hugged her tighter. "But that was the kind of thing that attracted me. I wanted to be an action film star!" She laughed. "Imagine! Jean Grey, Wonder Woman!" And the idea of Jean dressed up in a red, white, and blue leotard made me smile.

"But the thing is, I never stuck around for the rest of it. I just wanted the action, not the work or training, and not the consequences. I understand that now. It wasn't really me. Meanwhile, my parents had contacted the professor, who came and taught me how to shield, how to get back into my body, and told me what was going on."

She paused, thinking, and I waited. "So I can see what you mean - where you're coming from. I may have the memories - sort of - and the feelings, but my _body_ doesn't react. I may know how to fire a police-issue Glock semiautomatic, but I doubt I could actually hit a target. I don't have that _skill _. . . it's more than in your head. I mean, some of it is, but some of it's in your hands."

I found myself nodding vigorously. That's what I'd been trying to express; she had it exactly. I just hadn't been able to hang the correct words on it. "It's like riding a bike," I said now. "People can tell you and tell you, but until you practice, you can't do it." I eyed her. "It must be weird - and frustrating - to know things and not know them."

And now it was her turn to nod vigorously. "More than I can possibly explain."

Neither of us spoke then, but I felt as if we'd broken to the surface of something profound. I understood her in a way I never had before. She possessed knowledge but none of the experience to go with it, while I had experiences I barely understood, and very little knowledge. Maybe that's why we'd been so drawn to each other, like two puzzle pieces that completed each other.

"The thing is," she went on now, "I'm not half as naive as I probably seem. I _know_ a lot of things - more than most people learn in their whole lives. I've just never _done_ them before. I've been to Morocco, and Egypt, and most of Europe. Just not in _this_ body. I know what could happen."

"But would you know how to watch for it?"

She looked at me funny. "Watch for it?"

"Yeah. It's a kind of . . . body knowledge, I guess. And having had all those experiences mentally - but not being in physical danger - probably just makes it worse. Jean, you _move_ like you think nothing could ever happen to you. You've got this . . . confidence. Sometimes almost blindness." I rubbed at my upper lip. "That's something you lose, you know? That confidence. But you learn to be watchful, too, and I think that's why I'd be nervous for you. Maybe that's also what your parents are nervous about. Have you thought about doing something that's, I don't know, less . . . exotic? Maybe go to England? Or California? Or Hawaii?"

She sighed out in a gust of exasperation. "I've _been_ to those places. Well, not California, but I want to go someplace really _different_. See things I've never seen. I could speak Arabic, you know."

I blinked behind my glasses. "You can speak _Arabic_?"

"Sure. As long as I'm around somebody who can speak it, I can speak it. That goes for any language, really. I might have trouble with something tonal, like Mandarin, but yeah, I can usually do a little telepathic language lift. To really learn a language, though, I've got to spend some time immersed in it. Language is a skill, too. I do know German and French well enough that I don't have to read minds to use them. Oh, and Italian. Italian's easy."

I found myself laughing. "You're like one of those pocket translation programs."

Her smile turned impish. "Except I can pick up all the slang and swear words."

I shook my head at her. "What if I came with you?"

"Huh?"

"To Morocco. What if I tagged along with you and Misty?" Not that I really wanted to spend any more time in Misty Knight's company than I had to - we'd never hit it off even though I'd been to Jean's place quite a lot since that first visit - yet for Jean, I'd put up with Misty for however many weeks. "How long are you thinking about anyway? And you did tell me I should do something this summer."

For a moment, her face wore an expression of both surprise and hope, then it faded and she shook her head. "I'll ask, but I doubt it'll make a difference."

"Why not? If they're worried about you -"

"You're younger than I am," Jean interrupted.

"So?" It burst out of my mouth before I even considered, then I added, "Technically, yeah." I left the corollary to that unspoken.

She shook her head again, but kept her eyes on the carpet in front of her. "They don't know about your past, Scott. They don't know anything about you except that you're another student of the professor's, you're a mutant, you're a friend of Warren's, and you're finishing high school. Oh, and that your dad was in the air force."

Frowning, I pursed my lips and stared off at a window, finding myself unexpectedly torn. Mostly, I was grateful that she hadn't told her parents anything about my past, but for the first time, the fact that I wasn't just another squeaky-clean, upper class spoiled brat might actually be valuable, and that was a new experience for me. "Ask them anyway."

"Okay. Just don't get your hopes up."

I smiled. "It's not my hopes I'm worried about."

I stuck around to eat dinner in the city, and Jean called her parents - who made the very objection she'd expected them to make. I didn't mind, felt worse for Jean, but I also felt as if we'd gotten something vital out of this, in terms of mutual understanding, if not an overseas trip.

And I began to think more concretely about how I planned to spend my summer.

* * *

><p><strong>Notes:<strong> The song lyrics come from Mary Chapin Carpenter's "Why Walk When You Can Fly?"


	13. A Capella

After St. Louis became too domesticated in the mid-1800s, the gateway to the American west jumped to Omaha - outfitting point for settlers taking the Oregon Trail, or the Mormon Winter Quarters, or a major depot for Union Pacific, and eventually, the end of cattle drives coming from the other direction. The livestock was sold in the Stockyards on the south side of town, which covered 250 acres at one point. That's bigger than some small _towns_ in Nebraska. Once, the meat packing plant there had employed poor Irish, Italian and Czech immigrants who built their Catholic cathedrals in the city. Later, the plant had employed equally Catholic, equally poor Mexican immigrants whose descendants still live in that area of town. If you want good Spanish cuisine, travel L Street east from 72nd. Eventually, they tore down the Stockyards, built a mall in its place to a serve two-footed cattle instead. Progress, you know. We're all seeking to move ahead. Even me, however haltingly.

The city of Omaha is hilly, which often surprises newcomers. They think "plains ... _flat_." But we're still prairie here, and the city sits on the Missouri River with its bluffs and greenery and wind. Chicago has nothing on us. From some points west of town, one can look down into the river valley, lit up by urban brilliance like a Christmas ornament. Very pretty. It's a nice town, if a bit Midwestern white-skin bland after living in the colorful ethnic riot that makes up New York. But it's got more history than most American towns out here, and I prefer the smaller size. It's big enough to be interesting, with a zoo, museums, airport, malls, the air force base, the College World Series, and more damn restaurants per capita than anyplace in the US _except_ New York - or at least, that's what the natives claim. (I have my doubts.) Yet it's small enough that I can drive from the river on the east to the western ridge in forty-five minutes, unless traffic's bad.

I still do not like the city.

That's why I'm here. I need to make peace with the Big O.

Right now, I'm sitting behind the wheel of my Corvette in the parking lot of the Jewish Community Center, staring across 132nd street and the corn fields beyond that at the bunched buildings that make up the little village of Boys and Girls Town, separate and set off from the city sprawl all around. It even has it's own water tower, blue, with the name on the side.

I find I can't - physically can't - make myself get any closer than this.

And it took me three weeks to get this close.

My aversion to the place probably gives a wrong impression of it. It's a good program, and group homes around the country for at-risk youth have based their own programs on this one. But no matter how effective and enlightened overall, every program has glitches. I fell victim to one of those glitches.

I wonder, sometimes, what might have happened if I'd trusted someone there enough to report what was going on in our home? Henry has his 'what ifs' and I have mine, a whole string of them, not even counting 'what if the plane hadn't crashed?' I wonder what might have happened if the family in Kearney hadn't lost their farm and I'd stayed there. I wonder what might have been if someone had listened and believed when I'd said that bastard in my third home was molesting one of the girls. I even wonder what might have happened if I hadn't tried to con Jack Winters at pool down in Washington Heights in the City. Would I still have ended up where I did, just under someone else's thumb?

But I wasn't on the streets now, and I wasn't in Omaha at the mercy of the state. I had a little efficiency apartment off Underwood in Dundee that I was subletting for the summer, and a delivery job at Nebraska Furniture Mart (dressed in obnoxious green) to pay for it. I'd decided that there might be something to Xavier's suggestion that I try living on my own for a while. Jean's fierce irritation over _not_ being trusted to do so had convinced me of the value of it, so at the end of May, I'd received my diploma from Xavier, and a week later, had climbed into my overstuffed Corvette and headed west on Interstate 80 in a reverse trek of the one I'd made three and a half years before. I'm not sure if I'm trying to find peace, or make it, or if there's any effective difference - but here I am.

Starting the car, I pulled out of the community center parking lot. At summer solstice, the sun was still well above the horizon in a blue-quartz sky at 7:30, and I just drove around for a while, zipping from lane to lane past cars on the main thoroughfares - Dodge, Blondo, Pacific, Cass - earning dirty looks from other drivers. I was torn between anger at myself, and frustration. An hour later, I was sitting on the manicured, viridescent grass of Memorial Park north of Dodge and the university, watching joggers pass me in the growing twilight, or retiree couples walking dogs. Near the white marble arc of the World War II memorial, the brittle shrieks of children playing Frisbee pierced the air. One little brown-haired girl was bossing the rest like a drill sergeant but only half her playmates paid any attention. This made her angry and she stamped her foot, hands on hips. It reminded me of Jean, and that pierced me.

I'd been here three weeks, yet knew no one. Met people, yes, but knew them? Not at all. Omaha may not be New York, but it's still big enough to be comfortably anonymous. I went into work and did my job, but ate lunch in the company of a book. The other guys tolerated me because I didn't shirk and I could read a furniture assembly chart. Some of them are hopeless. On my first day out, the guy in charge of our truck had managed to get the mirror screwed upside-down on a dresser and I'd had to bite my hand to keep from laughing - all the more so because he was majoring in information technology at the local college. I'd hate to see a computer when he's done with it. But I didn't interact much with those guys; we had little in common.

Apparently, they'd decided I was gay, and let their assumptions slide into comments offered sideways with sly innuendo. I dressed neatly and kept my nails clean. I read too much, and didn't share in their off-color jokes, or their complaints about girlfriends and wives. I didn't look twice at women, and I didn't discuss sex.

But I thought about it. Sex. I thought about it in the abstract, and sometimes in the specific. I could be arrested in all movement by a Victoria Secret commercial on the TV, or unexpectedly aroused by a black-and-white photograph of a woman's naked outline in an art gallery off the Old Market. In defiance, or an attempt at appreciation, I'd bought a pair of Vargas prints for my walls. One of them depicted a fair-skinned redhead with a bouquet of lilies, draped in white (pink to me) from the waist down, titled "Jeanne." My subconscious must have been working overtime.

Certainly my unconscious was. Wet dreams became common, as if my body were thawing, but the first time I touched myself, it was indirect, with two layers of cloth between, still half asleep in the dim light of morning. I'd woken lying on my stomach, erection pressed against the mattress, and I'd pushed down. It had felt good, so I'd rocked my hips a bit, and when I'd needed more pressure, rolled onto my side to grip my cock through the cotton sheet and cotton briefs, mouth open, eyes still closed, hand moving up and down, creating a hot tingle all through my groin and at the base of my spine. No thought, just sensation.

I hadn't come. Conditioning is a hell of a thing, and even half-conscious was too conscious to let go that completely. Yet I must have lain there half an hour, masturbating, sometimes slow, sometimes fast, but never touching my own skin and never opening my eyes. Finally, I'd gotten up to take a cold shower.

Now as I left Memorial Park, I thought about that morning and a few since as I drove back to my apartment, a small place minimally furnished with kitchen necessities, a two-chair dinette, a daybed, a desk, a TV, and a chest of drawers. The rest had been up to me, but I hadn't added much beyond a VCR and stereo, plus a computer and a cheap pasteboard bookshelf. I don't think I could live anywhere for long without a bookshelf. The one odd piece - my sole self-indulgent investment - was an indoor fountain. Its waterfall soothed me at night.

Now, when I got home, I didn't bother to turn on a light. The setting sun through the blinds was enough for me to find my way. I did turn on the TV as I passed and then plugged in my fountain, which made a barely audible burble in the background beneath the sound of that new show, _The X-Files_. Bored on Friday nights - bored on most nights - I'd started watching summer reruns, but had forgotten all about it today, and it was half over. Giving up, I switched channels to MTV. I could vegetate as late as I wanted. Tomorrow was Saturday.

But a full-time job at hard labor left me rarely able to stay awake past midnight, and I dropped off to sleep in front of the blue glow sometime around eleven, woke again about two in the morning. At that hour, the timbre of the videos had changed, become more openly sexual and provocative, or violent and angry, and sometimes both at once. These weren't the videos they dared to run for the after-school crowd. They bothered me and I shut off the TV, then lay there in the dark and tried to go back to sleep. There was only the sound of falling water from the fountain, and behind my eyelids, a flash of erotic video images. Red light and black leather and rain-slick alleys. I had a hard-on. Pulling off my glasses, I squeezed my eyes shut, thinking about my red-headed Vargas girl in white, and my hand found my crotch, palm rubbing over the front of the jeans I still wore as my hips lifted off the daybed mattress. I felt a low, tight coiling, the banked frustration of earlier combined with hot arousal and the heaviness between my legs, plus simple body exhaustion at the end of another work week. What the hell was I doing here spinning wheels? I wanted some victory to show for these weeks. I wanted to drive down Flanagan Boulevard in Boys Town, right past Father Flanagan's statue, the chapel, and the field house. I wanted to drive by my old group home on Maher Drive and not shake. I wanted to head down to the air force base south of Bellevue and find the house we'd lived in. I wanted to look out across the tarmac and remember crossing it with my father.

Yet I'd done none of those things. Not a one. Maybe I could do this. I could unzip my jeans and reach inside the waistband of my briefs to touch bare skin.

Warm as blood, warmer than the rest of me, even in the humid heat of June. The calluses on my palms from my summer of moving furniture rubbed rough on sensitized flesh, so I gripped the shaft and moved loose skin a while, then let my thumb pass over the slick head, spreading pre-ejaculate and pressing down over the slit. The shocking intensity of it made me gasp. None of this was new, but the _freedom_ of it was. I did this for me and no one else - my pleasure. It had been a long time since I'd touched myself, skin on skin, because I'd wanted to.

The jeans and briefs were in the way, and letting go, I raised my ass off the daybed to shove clothes down my thighs where they bunched around my ankles. Kicking them off, I pulled my t-shirt over my head and stretched out on the mattress. It was too warm for a throw, the sheet damp beneath me. The overhead fan moved torpid air and cast a light breeze on my bare skin, and the water in the fountain sounded cool. I licked my fingers, running them over my chest and abdomen, exploring my own smooth skin. My guilt was a tangible thing, but I was allowed to feel this, wasn't I? Hadn't Hank said this was normal? Hadn't he said it was good? God knew, most men thought so.

My eyelids flinched. I didn't want to think about other men. I just wanted to listen to the water and think about the red headed girl in white hanging above my bed. Jeanne. Jean. My hands moved down again, seeking heat and weight. Bloated. I rolled my balls in one hand and stroked my cock with the other, a regular rhythm that increased with my breath. I thought of the slickness of the hot night, and how all my muscles were clenching. I thought of fine clavicles like birds' wings, and thin arms, shallow breasts. I thought of the fire in my belly and between my legs. My hand moved fast now, up and down, up and down, while the other cupped a palm over the head of my dick, thumb teasing along the sensitive, flared edge. So good. I was allowed this. I was _allowed_ this, heat pooling between my legs, pressure rising, friction hard and quick, hips bucking, mouth open because it was good.

The end came fast, a lightning strike of intense sensation that startled a cry out of me and curled my head and shoulders off the mattress while my cock spit semen all over my chest and belly. Even in the throes of orgasm, I had sense enough not to open my eyes.

Then I just lay there, right hand still on my cock, the left draped off the side of the daybed. I breathed. Was this a victory? Was I normal now, beating off to random images in my head like any other guy? I didn't feel like dancing. Mostly, I felt like sleeping, although my stomach was sticky, and inside, I felt slightly ill. After a while, I rose to clean up, then came back and, still nude, crashed for the night. I had dreams of being chased, and woke late on Saturday with the top sheet twisted about my legs and ankles and ass. Getting up, I made coffee and read the newspaper.

But it was another week before I managed to pull my car onto Flanagan Boulevard and drive past Father Flanagan's stained marble statue sitting amid equally stained marble children, and I made no attempt to drive by the house I'd fled from. It was _two_ weeks before I managed that.

The sky didn't fall in. In fact, it was rather anticlimactic. The real demons were in my head, not here in this cream-and-brown, two-story home with its box hedges, so little different from the ones sitting to either side. To see it again, see it real, loosened the hooks of my past a bit, and when I drove away, I was finally able to leave it behind.

* * *

><p>"The sun never sets on the fighting Fifty-Fifth," I said as I hit the blinker and the brakes both, easing my Corvette into a backed-up line of cars on the exit ramp off Highway 75 south approaching Offutt Air Force Base.<p>

"Huh?" was the intelligent comment from my companion in the passenger seat. Warren. He'd flown out to Omaha to spend a week with me at the end of August, before the semester began for him at Yale. I'd been absurdly glad to see him and had dragged him all over town - hell, all over the state - though his only request had been to see a buffalo. "Never have," he'd explained.

"Not even in a zoo?" I'd been flabbergasted.

"Not that I remember."

So I'd taken some days off and we'd spent more time out of Omaha than in it, which had suited Warren surprisingly well. We'd driven west along 92, car top down, sun blazing in a big, blue sky above the utterly flat, boring desolation that is Nebraska beyond Columbus. Yet he'd stared out at the monotonous landscape, grinning as if he'd thought it the most interesting thing under the sun. I'd taken him almost to the state's western edge to climb Scott's Bluff, and then back east to see Chimney Rock (which the more earthy natives had dubbed 'Elk Penis'), and to Homestead National Monument - just a one-room log cabin, sitting on one of the first quarter-sections of land claimed under the 1862 Homestead Act. We'd traveled down to Mahoney State Park on the Platte River to camp out; Warren Worthington III had never spent the night in a two-man tent with no electricity or climate control. We'd cooked hotdogs and marshmallows over the fire and talked about the future. That night, I'd slept under the softness of white wings. He hadn't been coming on to me. The wings just hadn't fit in the tent very well, took up the whole space. When I'd woken the next morning, it had been to brilliant, sun-filtered white that had made me smile for no good reason. We'd gotten dressed, cleaned up camp, then driven through a nearby preserve for native Nebraskan fauna. Warren had seen his first buffalo, and some Sandhill cranes, too.

That had been yesterday. Today, to round out his trip and the real reason he'd come to Nebraska in the sweltering heat of a Midwest August, we were headed to the annual air show. It was the first time I'd driven this way since I'd come back to Omaha, and maybe I'd needed the cover of a very public event and the company of a friend to do it.

Now, I explained my earlier remark. "'The sun never sets on the fighting Fifty-Fifth' is the motto for the airbase."

"Airbases have mottos?"

I laughed. "Yes, Warren. Airbases have mottos."

"Do they have mascots, too?"

I just looked at him. He was grinning and not looking at me. The car top was down again, his right arm resting on the door and wind blowing his blond hair. It was a mess from the drive and he was sweaty already though his jacket was loose linen, and it struck me what a gesture of friendship this was, that he'd come. It was the worst possible time of year for him, in terms of the weather - ungodly hot, with temperatures rumored to hit 97 degrees today, and on the tarmac, they'd be ten more than that. This whole week had been the same, and with his mutation, Warren could only go out in public if he wore a suit jacket. The leather harness that concealed his wings was simply too bulky to be hidden under anything less. Like my glasses, a jacket was a fixture on his person, one his social station usually managed to explain and excuse. But not on this day. Yet here he was, because when he'd asked me about Offutt, I'd said I hadn't yet been there, and two days later, he'd called back to inquire about the air show and would I take him to see it if he came out? I'd explained the heat. He'd insisted. So here we were, and he was already sweating, and I had four bottles of water packed in my backpack because I wasn't going to have him fainting on me from dehydration.

We talked about nothing much as the line of cars wound off the highway and down the road approaching the air base entrance. The closer we came, the warmer I felt and the more difficult it was to breathe. I wasn't sure if Warren was aware, but he was watching me with concern and finally interrupted himself to ask, "You okay?"

"Yeah."

"Scott, you've gone white -"

"I'm okay." But I could see the entrance gate in the distance now, looking the same as it had the last time I'd seen it nine years ago and my belly felt as if someone had drop-kicked it. This was harder, much harder, than going to Boys Town. I hadn't been happy there. Here, I had been, and it was the last time (until recently) I could say I'd been happy. God knew, it was the last time I'd felt safe and the car was swerving because I couldn't steer and Warren was calling my name, holding me to the present, reaching across to grab the wheel. "Stay with me, Scott - stay with me."

"I can't do this."

"Yes, you can. Pull the car to the side of the road. I'm going to help steer, just push the gas a little. That's right. Okay, stop. Put the car in park."

I did what he said as cars inched past us and heads swiveled to watch with idle curiosity. I just sat there and tried to regulate my breathing as Warren got out and walked around to the driver's side. "Move over," he said gently. Unstrapping myself, I lifted my body over the stick shift and he slid in, adjusting the seat for his longer legs and buckling up. "Put your seatbelt on." His voice was soft but firm and I obeyed. Then he turned on the signal light and eased us back into the line of cars. "If you start feeling shocky, put your head down between your legs. I don't want you passing out on me."

And that made me laugh, since I'd been the one initially concerned about him doing that to me, yet he was fine and I was the one who wasn't. "Okay," I said, feeling supremely stupid. "I'm okay."

Warren just glanced at me, eyebrows hiked, but he had the good grace not to say anything. We'd reached the gate and the guys on duty looked over the car, then waved us though.

And after nine years, I was back on Offut Air Force base. I blinked around me in a kind of dim surprise as bored soldiers in fatigues directed us to a parking area. The place had changed surprisingly little. I could remember the rows of white satellite dishes, the round weather tower, the expanse of hangars, the missile monuments, and even the maple trees lining the roadway. Warren kept his own counsel as he followed the snaking line of cars, giving me space to get a grip on myself, and I was grateful it was Warren here and not Jean, as she'd have tried to press me into 'talking about it.' There wasn't anything to say, really.

We parked and hauled out the cheap plastic lawn chairs we'd bought for this very purpose, or that Warren had bought. "I'm not standing for four or five hours," he'd said. Then we'd followed the line of tourists up towards the airfield. I was a stranger here, yet not, and I didn't know quite how to handle that. One part of me enjoyed the anonymity while another wanted someone - anyone - to recognize me, recognize my right to be here more than the rest. My father had been a goddamn _test pilot_. The elite of the elite. Yet I found myself backed up in line with everyone else at gate security, just another civvie, and I felt vaguely insulted by that, and amused at my own arrogance.

The airfield itself looked very different with planes and choppers parked everywhere, some roped off, some not. There were labeled food stalls in rows, information tables, souvenir stations, and Port-O-Potties. People stood in line or milled about, pushing strollers, carrying food or bottled water, chairs or fliers, bags or (occasionally) screaming children. The drone of the master of ceremonies came over a loudspeaker, surprisingly clear, and the sun beat down from a brilliant sky. Not a cloud anywhere. Heat swam up off black asphalt, blurring distances.

"The schedule says there's an F-16 demo at twelve-twenty," Warren said, reading from the little newsprint schedule that we'd been handed as we entered. "Which one's the F-16 anyway?"

"The little one."

"Little one?"

"Yeah, the F-15 and F-18 are bigger planes."

"Oh. Which one did your dad fly?"

"All of them." I wasn't exaggerating. "That was his job - be prepared to fly anything at need for Special Operations in 'Nam. 'Any time, any place.' He even flew the Blackbird for a while when he came back - the SR-71."

Warren consulted the schedule. "I don't see that on here."

I smiled ruefully. "You wouldn't. It's been retired." My eyes had been flicking over the grounds while we walked. Most of the military personnel I saw peppered among civilians were young, like those directing traffic - no one likely to have been at Offutt when my father was, and I wondered if I really wanted to run into someone who'd known him.

Seeing what I'd been looking for off in the distance, I grabbed the sleeve of Warren's jacket and hauled him towards the line of fighters in the distance. "Come on." Startled, he stumbled in my wake. "There's a Falcon, an F-16, over there - see the size difference?" I pointed to the aircraft. "The one beside it with the double tail is an Eagle, an F-15. And the one beyond that is the Hornet, the F-18. The Navy uses those to land on aircraft carriers and the Blue Angels fly them. And that - that's an A-10 Warthog, ugly as sin but its guns fire _incredibly_ fast . . ." And on I went. I wasn't sure where I was pulling this stuff from since I hadn't been around fighters in years and hadn't bothered to keep up, but it rattled right off my tongue with an almost frightening ease. A couple guys even turned to look as they passed, expressions impressed. It wasn't until the third did a double take that I recognized him as someone I worked with, a guy named Jeff Pratt. Ironic that in a crowd of a couple hundred thousand, and a city of half a million where I knew but a handful of people, I'd run into one of them here.

"Summers?" he asked, turning back with his girlfriend on his arm and giving Warren a once-over. I could see his brain making connections I didn't like. "Where'd you learn about _planes_?" It was clear from his tone that it wasn't a knowledge he'd ever have attributed to me.

"His father was an air force pilot," Warren said before I could, shifting his schedule and offering a freed hand to Pratt. "I'm Warren. Scott and I went to school together, in New York."

Pratt shook the hand and I wondered if he'd try to wipe it on the back of his jeans when he let go. But he didn't, just said, "I'm Jeff. Scott and I work at Nebraska Furniture Mart." He gave a sideways nod of the head to his girl - "That's Tracy" - as if she were an accessory instead of a person. She didn't object. I tried smiling at her, but she just blinked at me. Dim bulb. "Pilot's brat, huh?" Pratt asked me. "So why aren't _you_ in the air force?"

I just touched the glasses. The guys knew I had an 'eye problem,' but I didn't discuss it and they didn't push. Now, Pratt actually colored a little. "Oh." Then, in an awkward attempt to change the subject, he shoved his hands in his back pockets (and did that constitute wiping them?) and asked, "So you know planes, huh?"

"A little."

"Sounded like a lot."

"Not compared to a pilot."

Warren had shot me a glance, probably wondering at the terse tone of voice, but I had no desire to stand around talking to Pratt. His idea of culture was a Husker's party on Game Saturday. "Your dad around here then?" Pratt continued.

"My dad's dead," I replied. "Plane crash." I didn't explain it hadn't been in the line of duty.

"Oh. Uh - sorry."

I shrugged and Warren wasn't just looking at me now, he was frowning. "Come on, Scott," he said, "We'll miss the F-16." He smiled genially at Pratt and his girl. "Nice to meet you."

"Yeah," Pratt replied as we walked off.

"You can be a real son of a bitch sometimes," Warren said conversationally.

"I don't like him."

"That doesn't mean you have to show it quite so obviously."

"Why not?"

"Scott - " He sighed. "I don't get you sometimes. You were saying, when I first got out here, that you barely knew anyone even after almost three months, and now I can see why! The guy was just being friendly."

"He was being nosey. He thinks I'm gay and now he assumes you're my lover."

Warren coughed and turned beet red. "Drink some water," I told him, fishing a bottle from my backpack. "I don't want you passing out from heat stroke." Then my eye caught on flat-black metal skin and I stopped dead. "A Nighthawk! _Come on_," and I was hauling him off again towards a roped off area where an F-117 sat on display, its crew talking to clustered observers. "This was the plane my dad really wanted to take up, but never got a chance. On radar, it looks no bigger than a bird. Takes a computer to fly it because of its shape." A very distinctive V-shape with a small double-tail and an angled cockpit. She looked sleek and built for stealth.

Warren let me direct him towards the plane. "You're practically salivating," he said, laughing.

"I am not."

"Yes, you are." We were walking along the line of yellow restraining rope, my eyes on the plane beyond. "Have you thought about taking some flying lessons, Scott?"

I stopped dead and swung around to look at him. "What?"

"Your dad was a pilot. You might be good at it."

"Warren - I can barely get _in_ a plane that's going to get off the ground. What makes you think I could fly one?"

"There's a difference," he pointed out, "between getting in a plane that someone else is flying and flying it yourself." I just blinked. He had a point, one I'd never before considered. "You don't like letting other people drive, either, now that you can. You're a control freak."

That last bit had been offered in humor, but it was true enough. I didn't reply, yet I thought about what he'd said for the rest of the air show. We took our lawn chairs to the edge of the airfield and found places to sit, and Warren fanned himself with the schedule. Once he was seated, with the chair back to conceal the wing rack, I talked him into taking off his jacket. "Just stay leaning back in the chair and no one will notice," I said, and took it upon myself to make food runs. With the jacket off, he looked less flushed, and we enjoyed the afternoon, though by the end of it, and even under sunblock, the fair skin of his cheeks and nose were lobster red. My own body felt pellucid, full of sunlight. I was high on it, and like a shy-proofed horse, no longer skittish of this place. Yet on the drive home, I didn't make any detour by base family housing. I wasn't ready for that.

When we arrived back at my small apartment, we freed Warren from the jacket and rack and he unfurled his wings in relief. There was barely space enough for him to spread them to their fullest extent, and he had to stand exactly in the room's center. The tip of one touched my refrigerator door and the tip of the other hit the closet, but the look on his face while he shook them out and fluttered pinions was just short of ecstatic. I wondered, again, how he could stand it, having them folded back on themselves and bound tightly for hours on end. Then again, he'd told me once that he couldn't imagine having to wear dark glasses twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. We all adjust to the things we have to.

I let Warren shower first since he was dripping wet with sweat, then took my own turn, dressing fully before exiting. I'd never before shared sleeping space with Warren, never had a reason to in the big mansion, and I'd realized that I wasn't comfortable in a state of undress, or even near-undress, in front of him. Warren had never behaved with anything less than graciousness, yet my unease remained. He didn't look at my body neutrally and I was all too aware of that fact. I'd like to say I acted out of consideration for him, but it wouldn't be true. My reasons sprang from my own disquiet.

When I came out, I found him examining the near-naked, red headed girl above my daybed. If he were jealous of or hurt by my choice of decor, it didn't show. "Pretty," he said, looking at his nails, and I was unsure how to reply, so I said nothing, hoping he didn't intend to press. Apparently sensing my embarrassment, he straightened and clapped his hands together. "So, where are we going for dinner?"

We wound up down the street at the Dundee Dell mostly because we were too tired to get dressed up again and drive anywhere. The place is half bar, half restaurant, decorated in wood paneling and Scottish whisky posters. I'd never realized that there were so many different brands of whisky, and it turned out that Warren knew something about scotch whisky just as he knew something about golf. "You sure you weren't Scottish in a former life?" I asked him, and he managed to look offended, though I think he was more amused; he ordered fish-and-chips to prove his authentic English ancestry. Despite the discussion of scotch, neither of us attempted to order anything stronger than Coke. Even Warren was still underage.

While we waited for dinner, Warren finally brought up the topic I'd been waiting all week for him to raise. "So. What _are_ you going to do this fall, Scott?" I was due to vacate my sublet apartment inside a week when the owners returned to town, and Warren was taking back with him the few items I planned to keep - my fountain, some books, the VCR and my two Vargas girls. But I wasn't going back to New York with them.

"I'll drive north," I replied now. "To Anchorage."

He blinked twice before he could find enough voice to reply. "You're _driving_ to Alaska? Do you have any idea how far away Alaska is? And what time of year it is?"

"Yes, I do," I told him. "It's not that bad yet - doesn't even usually snow in Anchorage until late October."

"It's Alaska!"

"The southern coast of Alaska, and the Japan Current keeps it warm. It's really not that cold," I told him.

He eyed me. "You've been looking into this."

"Yeah. I have maps already. I figure it'll take about a week and a half to get there."

"Why?" He seemed very puzzled.

"I want to see the city I was born in." I also wanted to see the place my parents were buried, but didn't explain that.

"That's not what I meant. Why _drive_ there instead of going back to New York and taking a plane? Especially if you're just staying a few days?"

I eyed him. "I'd rather drive a hundred hours one way than take a plane, War."

Sighing out in a gust, he sat back in his seat and looked off through the doorway of the little anteroom where we'd been seated. There was a pool table in the room beyond, and some videogames. "Would you fly if I took you?"

My eyebrows went up and I took a sip of lemonade. "If you took me, where would we store the luggage?"

It took him a minute to get that, then he laughed. "I meant in my plane, jackass. I flew it out here."

"No," I said simply and set down my glass. "I want to drive. Alone. It's nothing personal." Or rather, it was very personal, and I didn't want to share it.

"What if Jean went with you?"

There was just an edge to the question and my eyes flashed up behind the glasses, though he couldn't see. "Jean's in med school. And even if she weren't, the answer would still be 'no.'"

He relaxed, minutely. "Sorry." And I wasn't sure what he was apologizing for - pressing me or being jealous of Jean. For a minute, I wondered if he'd say more, but he didn't. "When are you coming back?" he asked instead.

"When I run out of money, I guess."

"Scott, you know - "

"Don't." I held up my hand. "The professor said the same thing. I'm not wasting my savings. It's why I worked this summer."

"To drive to Anchorage?"

"Sort of." To live in Omaha and drive to Anchorage. To be independent - just me, myself and I.

He sighed and played with the ring of condensed water made by his tea glass. The waitress had arrived with our meal and we ate in silence for a while. Finally, he said, "What are you going to do when you get back to New York? You are coming back?"

"Yes, I'm coming back. And I don't know what I'm doing."

"Look - I know I bug you about applying to Yale, but even if you don't want to go there, God, Scott, you can't . . . You made a 740 in math, dammit! You can't waste that!"

Ah, yes, we were back around to college. Warren couldn't imagine anyone not wanting to go to college if he had the opportunity, but I still wasn't sure that I did. (Even while another part of me recognized that it was probably inevitable.) When my SAT scores had come back last spring, Xavier had looked them over and told me - with a little smile - that between my totals and my ability to write, not to mention my orphan status (and his money), I could attend any college in the country that I wished. I'd shrugged and gone for a long walk, and when I'd come back, I'd announced I was going to Omaha for the summer. A week later, I'd been on the road. Xavier had questioned none of it, giving me as much - or as little - help as I'd requested. Mostly as little. He knew that however far I flew, I'd come back to Westchester to roost. Just as I knew I was flying with a safety net this time. Funny, how that knowledge made me stronger, not weaker. Being alone in the world is a crushing thing, and not to be confused with simple solitude.

Now, to Warren, I said, "I'm not sure what I'm going to do yet. Don't ride me about it."

The line of his mouth pressed down thin and angry, but he said nothing more, and the rest of the meal was threaded with uncomfortable tension. I resented and regretted it at once. Until tonight, his visit had gone well, yet it seemed as if every time we saw each other, he had to bring up college eventually.

By the time we'd left the restaurant, we'd managed to return to less awkward interaction, but the matter still lay between us, the rock in the lake that sent out ripples. At least he'd saved tossing it until the end of his trip, instead of at the beginning. But it was still a rock.

* * *

><p>The following Saturday, a couple of suitcases, a box of books, a bag of pistachios, and I headed west out of Omaha and then north. If I'd ever traveled this route before, I didn't remember it. I stopped for a few days in Puget Sound to see the orcas, taking a boat trip out to the islands. It wasn't peak season, and it was drizzly, but I didn't care. This wasn't SeaWorld. The whales were free, their dorsal fins straight up as they raced off the port bow, splitting the gray water and watching us watch them.<p>

I got lucky and a pair of young adult males swam up quite closely on my side of the boat, breaching. Eight thousand pounds of whale arcing out of the water and slamming back is unbelievably impressive when he's less than thirty feet away. He soaked me, and all I could do afterward was stand in dripping clothes and laugh. They were the most beautiful, powerful things I'd ever seen.

The very next day, I was back on the road. The Alaskan Highway has some fantastic scenery with high mountains and green meadows, and the seven-mile expanse of Muncho Lake. But other parts are just as boring as Western Nebraska, and driving from Seattle to Anchorage covered almost as many miles as driving from LA to New York. It took me five days, and I arrived on the second-year anniversary of my arrival at Xavier's. I thought that portentous.

There was snow on the peaks of the Chugach Mountains southeast of the city by the time I reached Anchorage, and I booked a room in an Econo Lodge on the north side of town near the rail yard and air force base. I couldn't afford the nice hotels even if Xavier could, and this was my trip. Once I'd checked in, I sat on the double bed with its garish maroon spread and stared at myself in the mirror, wondering what to do next. Unlike Omaha, I had no real memories of this place, and aside from idle curiosity about the city in which I'd been born, I'd come here primarily to visit my parents' graves - morbid as that sounds. Yet I had no idea where to start looking. All I knew was that their bodies had been flown back to Anchorage to be buried beside my father's parents. Who'd actually seen to the internment, I couldn't say, nor did I know why they'd wanted to be buried _here_.

My grandfather had been a World War II vet who'd settled in Anchorage during the boom years following the war. He'd bought a little floatplane freight company on Lake Hood near the airport, and my father had learned to fly when he was younger than I am now. That's not as extraordinary as it sounds. There are six times as many pilots in Alaska as anywhere else in the United States, because there are so many fewer roads. But, apparently, he and my grandfather hadn't seen eye to eye on much that didn't have wings (and even on some things that did), and the air force had been happy to recruit him at eighteen. I think it purest irony I was born at Elmendorf, since he'd traveled as far away as Vietnam in between. He'd never made much effort to stay in contact with his family, as far as I knew.

Now, on impulse, I picked up the Anchorage phone book and flipped through it, found fifteen Summers listed but none with names I knew - not that I'd expected to recognize anyone, much less intended to call random strangers just in case they were related to me. Next, I checked out cemeteries, but there were so many, I couldn't guess where to start, so, at a loss, I looked for Catholic churches. There were several, but some I could eliminate, such as the Korean parish. That left a reasonable number, and it was still afternoon, so I picked up the phone and dialed the parish office of what looked like the biggest in the diocese. A pleasant female voice answered, "Holy Family Cathedral. How may I help you?" I opened my mouth to reply . . . but nothing came out. What was I supposed to say? "Hello?" the woman asked. "Is anyone there?"

"Um . . . this is probably going to sound crazy, but I'm trying to find out if a family used to go to church there. Do you, like, have records?" Only after I asked did I realize how silly the question sounded and I put a hand over my face. Of course they had records. "Um - I want to know if a Summers family used to be members there. Chris and Kate Summers. They had a son named Scott. Michael Scott."

There was a pause, then she asked, "Do you know what years they might have attended? And can I inquire as to who's asking, and why?"

"I'm their son. I would have been baptized there in late '77. I don't remember when we left. The next summer maybe? Or the year after that?"

"Ah," she said. Another brief pause and I could hear the clack-clack of fingers on a computer keyboard, then she asked, "Do you have a number where someone could call you back?"

"Yeah." And I read off the number for the motel and my room, and she hung up.

Nervous, I fixed a pipe to calm down and thought about where to go for supper while I waited. And waited. I wasn't sure what was taking so long. Didn't churches have computerized records these days? Almost two hours later, the phone rang, but this time, it was a male voice. "I'm Father Ackerson from Holy Cross."

I blinked in surprise; it was an entirely different parish. No wonder it had taken a while. The secretary at Holy Family must have called the diocese's main office, looking for our membership records, and I was surprised she'd gone to the trouble. "I understand you're looking for information about the Summers family?" the priest asked.

"Yeah, I _am_ the Summers family." What was left of it. "Scott Summers." I took a breath, then just blurted, "I'm trying to find out where my parents are buried. They died when I was eight and they were buried up here, next to my grandparents. But I don't know where. I was hoping somebody at their church could help me."

Three beats of silence followed that and I could just imagine the guy's expression. Mine was probably the weirdest request he'd had all month . . . maybe all year. "You're at the Econo Lodge?" he asked.

"Yes, sir."

"How long have you been in town?"

"I just got here. I live in New York - City. I drove up here to find my parents' graves."

"You _drove_ to Anchorage from New York?" The voice was just short of astonished.

"Well, sort of. I spent the summer working in Omaha, Nebraska. Then I, uh, drove north."

There was an even longer pause. "How old are you, Scott? Do your stepparents know where you are?"

"I'm seventeen, almost eighteen. And yes, my guardian knows where I am." I gripped the earpiece more tightly, then asked, "Did you know my parents? Did they go to church there?"

"They attended Holy Cross some years back, but I'm afraid I was appointed after they left. There are people in the church who would've known them, though, including both the vicar and the priest who was here before me. He retired in town and lives at the rectory. Would you like to meet him?"

Suddenly unsure, I ran a hand through my hair. I'd come up here to find my parents' graves, yet presented with the concrete possibility of talking to someone who'd known them when they were alive, I shied away. "I don't know," I said. "I mean . . . Hell, I don't know." I must have sounded like an indecisive idiot.

But I forgot I was talking to someone used to dealing with uncertain people. "I tell you what," the priest said, "how about if we meet somewhere and visit? If you just arrived in Anchorage, the least I could do is give you some sight-seeing advice."

That was less threatening, so I agreed. "You like pizza?" he asked, and twenty minutes later, we were walking into Jamico's, a local pizzeria in Mountain View, after he'd picked me up from the motel. It was probably foolish for me to have gotten into a stranger's car in a city where I knew no one, but considering where else I'd been in my life, letting a priest take me to supper was the least of it. He was a square-built man in his late thirties with thinning hair and dark eyes, dressed in the collar of his profession and blue jeans. When he'd first seen me in the motel lobby, he'd held out a hand. "I'm Father Ackerson, but everyone around here just calls me Father Keith."

In retrospect, I realize that he'd feared I was a runaway - which I found amusing, considering - but he turned out to be a genuinely nice guy and reminded me of my caseworker, Carol, the kind of person who cares about others for no better reason than because it's the right thing to do. He was shrewd, too, and with a few well-placed questions over dinner, elicited more about my past than I'd meant to tell. And what I didn't tell, I suspected he could guess.

At the end of the meal, he shook his head, smiling a little, dark eyes crinkled. He had a friendly face. "Sometimes truth really is stranger than fiction. If you'll come by the rectory tomorrow, I'm sure Father Oberlin would love to meet you - but that's up to you. He's the one who baptized you. And the one who buried your parents."

"They had a funeral then?"

"Yes, they had a funeral." He tipped his head. "There's someone else you might like to meet while you're here. Did you know your grandmother is still alive, Scott? Your father's mother?"

I think I'd have been less surprised if he'd announced the Second Coming of Christ. My mouth opened and shut, opened and shut like a mute fish. Then I leapt to my feet. "Where? I mean, how? I mean - _Shit!" _Realizing what I'd just said, I slapped a hand over my mouth.

Father Keith waved a hand. "It's okay." Then he tapped the table in front of me and I sat back down. "I can't say for sure why your grandmother wasn't given custody of you and your brother, but I have a few ideas. Father Oberlin is probably in a better position to say. As for 'where' - she lives in a nursing home here in town. She's not in particularly good health."

"Do you . . . do you visit her?"

"Father Oberlin does, every month. He's retired, but he continues to do visitation for the parish. I have met her, though."

He waited while I chewed over this news. Finally, I asked, "What's wrong with her?"

"She has advanced diabetes." A pause, then he added, "And she's a recovering alcoholic."

"Oh." And that probably explained right there why Alex and I hadn't been placed in her custody. So many things were dancing around in my head that I wasn't sure what I wanted to say first, but a question popped out: "Do you think she wants to see me?"

"I don't know. Do you want to see her?"

"I . . . " The answer seemed obvious - except it wasn't - and how he'd known that, I had no idea. He wasn't the professor to read my mind.

And had Xavier known all this? Had he kept the knowledge that my grandmother was still living from me?

"I mean, yeah, of course I want to meet her," I said now. "She's the only family I've got, but - I don't know."

"It's scary," the priest said - a statement, not a question, which made it easier for me to nod in agreement. We talked a little more and I said I'd drive out to the church the next day. He drew a map to it on a napkin for me - it was near a big mall - then took me back to my motel. "Get some sleep," he advised. But as soon as I got inside my room, I called Westchester.

"My grandmother's alive," I said without preamble when the professor answered.

"Your _grandmother_?" And the genuine surprise in Xavier's voice told me that he hadn't known. "Scott, that's . . . wonderful news." Except his tone said he wasn't sure it was, and I wondered how this must feel to him? For that matter, I wasn't sure how it felt to me, and realized that I'd called him in the hopes he could help me figure it out as much as I'd called to discover if he'd known all along.

"I don't know if I want to see her," I said.

He didn't reply immediately, then asked, "Why not?" and, "If you haven't seen her already, how do you know she's alive?"

So I told him about calling the church and meeting the priest, ending with, "I'm, well, kinda wondering now if maybe I shouldn't, like, get her address and write to her first - see how she answers?"

"That's a possibility," Xavier said, neutrally.

"Do _you_ think I should see her? If she's in a nursing home, and was an alcoholic, she's not going to be the kind of grandma who bakes you cookies, y'know?" Then again, I wasn't the kind of grandson such a grandmother would bake cookies for, so perhaps we suited each other.

"Why don't you visit the priest tomorrow, Scott, and find out what he has to say? But don't let him pressure you into something you don't feel ready to do. After all, you don't have to make a decision this trip. You _can_ go back later."

True enough, though Father Keith had said her health wasn't good. I didn't repeat that. There was something subtle in Xavier's tone that worried me and I focused on it instead. "This won't make any difference," I told him. "I owe you everything, sir. I'm coming back to New York. You don't have to worry about that."

A startled pause greeted my words. "Now who is the psychic one?" But his tone was amused, then he said, more seriously, "And thank you. Call me tomorrow, son."

"I will."

* * *

><p>The size of a thing isn't always immediately obvious when first glimpsed. It can lie partly submerged and obscured under the surface. Then suddenly, like a whale breaching, it rises up and up, and you think it's never going to stop. The next two weeks were like that.<p>

I arrived at the parish by mid-morning the next day, and Father Keith had a thin manila folder ready for me. Inside was a copy of my parents' funeral service bulletin. I was surprised the church had kept one. There was also a photocopy of my baptismal record. "If you should ever need it for anything," the priest said. Along with both these was the address for the Catholic cemetery where my parents were buried and even the plot numbers, plus a little map of how to get there. Father Keith seemed to like drawing maps. There was also an address for my grandmother's nursing home. "We weren't sure if you'd prefer to go alone, or if you'd like company," he said.

And I wasn't sure myself. My grandmother wasn't something I'd expected, and I'd given no real thought to it before last night. "I think," I began, "I think maybe someone who knows her already should go with me, to talk to her first. You know, um, it's not everyday your grandson shows up out of the blue with no warning."

Father Keith smiled. "I think we can manage that. Would you like to meet Father Oberlin now?"

So I met Father Oberlin, a wizened little man who nonetheless seemed like a tough nut. It turned out that he hadn't known my parents well - Dad had been at Elmendorf only fifteen months - but he'd known my grandparents a bit better, so we talked about their floatplane business, and my father as a boy. It seemed I wasn't the only one who'd had a wild adolescence, though the old guy did his best to avoid saying anything too incriminating. Nonetheless, he said enough for me to know there was a lot he _wasn't_ saying, and my curiosity kicked in. But I didn't ask questions. He wasn't the one I wanted to ask questions of.

He and I left after lunch - they fed me BLT sandwiches in their rectory kitchen - to drive to the nursing home. It was on the edge of town in the opposite direction, out near the airport. Father Oberlin led and I followed in my own car, my whole body flashing hot and cold by turns and once or twice, my sight tunneled. I had to force myself not to take a sharp right at a traffic light and run away. Anxiety was near-equal to excitement and my belly roiled with the conflicting emotions. What if she didn't want to see me?

At the nursing home, I asked him to visit first, to tell her I was there. Nodding, he laid a hand on my head in an antiquated gesture of benediction that nonetheless felt surprisingly comforting. "Find a seat somewhere, son, and I'll come back to get you."

There wasn't a formal waiting room, but there was a common area where several of the residents were watching TV, playing cards or otherwise passing time. This nursing home fell into the 'institutional' category more than the high-priced 'assisted living' category, so amenities and decor were simple and cheap. I couldn't tell the colors. One of the card-players asked who I'd come to see, but when I said, "Deborah Summers," he just shook his head. I didn't know if that meant he didn't know her, or that he did and wished he didn't, and I wasn't inclined to ask.

I watched television, a rerun of _Gunsmoke_, until the priest returned. It had taken a good half hour, and anxiously, I stood up to approach, rubbing my palms down the sides of my pants; I'd put on nice khakis that morning, and a light sweater, instead of jeans. His expression seemed wry. "I'm not sure which of you is more nervous about the other," he said, which helped. "But she does want to see you." And a weight lifted off my chest, even while a different kind of weight settled on it.

My grandmother's room was near the end of a long hallway, little better than a hospital bed surrounded by hints of permanence and individuality. Her bedside table and the small dresser both had nicknacks on it, and a red-and-black (colors I could see) quilt lay on the bed, some native design pieced into it. There was a crucifix hanging above her pillow, and a picture of (I assumed) my grandfather beside a plane on the far wall, but other decor was generic and cheap, as were the drapes, and the whole place stank of disinfectant over chronic illness and imperfect hygiene. The room was a double, the bed beside hers occupied by another resident who appeared to be delirious. One of my sharpest memories of my first conversation with my grandmother was the occasional, punctuating grunts or moans from the other bed. Damn disconcerting.

Physically, she was a wreck, bedridden with one of her lower legs amputated - the result of the diabetes, apparently. But the moment I saw her, I could tell that whatever the mental state of her roommate, she didn't share it. She was very much _there_, and I stopped in the doorway to stare while she stared back, dark eyes measuring. Yet what startled me more than her physical state (which I'd partly expected), was _what_ she was - an Alaskan native. I must have known that at some point, as my surprise felt dulled at the edges, more a reminder than a shock, but it _was_ still a surprise. "Hi," I said, feeling stupid, but I had no idea what else to say. The priest occupied a corner, patient, watching, offering his presence as ballast, but ready to depart once it was clear he wasn't needed.

She didn't return my greeting, though she did stretch out her hand to me and the piercing clarity of her eyes grew obscured by a wet shimmer. She was a stranger, but she wasn't, and the eagle-sharp features of her face reminded me of my father. I approached the bed to take her hand with its hard palm and knuckles distorted by arthritis. "Sit," she said. I did so. Then she said, "No, stand up. I want to look at you." So I did that. She didn't let go of my hand, but clung with enough strength to bruise my fingers. Her voice was raspy, as if she didn't speak much, or it had been ruined by cigarettes and alcohol, or both.

Then she asked me a shocking thing. "Where's your brother?"

And I could only stand there and blink. My brother? Maybe she wasn't as mentally together as I'd thought. "I don't know what happened to Alex, Grandma."

Her mouth dropped open a little, and she let go of my hand, struggling to sit up in the bed. "But they told me you were adopted. They told me you'd both been placed."

"We were, but not together." I sat down in the chair again and bent over to rest my elbows on my knees, hands folded beneath my chin, and we both took to staring at each other again, mute in the face of so much to say. The woman in the other bed muttered incomprehensible, disjointed phrases under her breath.

"Take those glasses off," my grandmother ordered finally. "I want to see your eyes."

"I can't."

"Why not?"

Taking a breath, I glanced behind me, but the priest was already gone. "I don't guess he told you, but I'm a mutant. Have you heard about them?"

"A mutant?"

Apparently not. So I tried to explain. She listened, but seemed more concerned by the fact that the glasses never came off than by the fact I could blow her to kingdom come if they ever should. Funny, the things that bother people. "Tell me what happened nine summers ago," I said finally.

She took my hand again. "This is how I heard it," she began, "I got a phone call in late June from the base, asking if I could come down there, there'd been an accident." She looked away, and didn't continue for a moment. "Your grandfather, he'd died two years before and I wasn't in the best health - had sold the business and didn't have much money, couldn't even get somebody to fly me there and that's a mighty fine irony." She kept her head turned away. "I tried to hitch, but got no further than Dawson Creek and had to come back." I wasn't sure whether I wanted to laugh or cry at the image of an old woman trying to hitchhike from Alaska to Nebraska. "By then, the Nebraska child protective services had called to say they thought the two of you would be better off in these placements they'd found." There was bitterness in that, and anger. "I thought you'd been adopted together." She looked back at me. "How could they split you up and tell me that was better?"

I thought about the probable reasons she'd been passed over, and wondered whether I _would_ have been better off here, living with an alcoholic, diabetic grandmother, but still my family? "Alex was adopted," I told her. "That's really all I know. I was in a coma for months. By the time I woke up, he'd been placed, and records are sealed. I have no idea where he is now."

"What about you?"

"I had brain damage," I said, as if that explained everything. "I did the foster home thing." But I didn't want to talk about me. "You were the one who saw them buried? My parents?" She nodded. "Can you tell me what happened to the plane? Does anyone even know? I was too young. No one ever explained it to me."

She sighed. "Flying in mountains is tricky business - full of updrafts. You hit one wrong, it'll spin a small plane out of control even with an experienced pilot like Chris. It's amazing Kate got you two boys out in time." She looked at me. "The plane was found, or parts of it, but not the bodies. I marked where it happened on a map. I'll give it to you, in case you want to go there. I always meant to, but never managed."

Her revelation hit like a dull blow. How ironic. I'd come all this way to visit a pair of graves that, as fate would have it, were empty. The real graves lay in a Rocky Mountain valley of Colorado, probably not more than a long day's drive from the city in which I'd spent my entire summer.

"What happened to you, after the accident?" she asked, and I gave her a much-censored version. She wasn't buying it; I could tell that within the first few minutes. When I was done, she reached out again to take my hand. "Maybe someday you'll tell me the rest, eh? But you survived." It was an unexpected echo of Jean's own words to me almost a year ago.

"Whatever doesn't kill me makes me stronger?"

"If you let it." And looking at her lined face, a bit fragile around the eyes with the brown skin of cheeks and nose rosy from broken capillaries (a tell-tale sign of too close and too long a tango with alcohol), I thought that maybe she ought to know. She'd lost a husband, her health, her son, her grandsons, and a leg, but never her senses. I'd lost parents, a brother, my innocence and my way, then I'd found it again. Maybe we'd be good for each other. I grinned at her and she smiled back. I'd inherited her smile, I noticed.

"So what was my dad like, as a kid? Father Oberlin didn't say much, but I could tell there was plenty he _wasn't_ saying."

That made her laugh. "Chris was a regular little hellion, contrary as a blizzard . . ." And in this question-and-answer fashion, we talked for the rest of that afternoon, and the one after, and the one after that. I took her out of the nursing home several times, the first she'd been able to leave in years, and she showed me the city. She liked my car, and to my shock, I discovered she knew a thing or three about engines - plane engines, car engines, it didn't matter. My grandfather had been chief pilot for their floatplane business, but my grand_mother_ had been chief mechanic; she'd learned from her own brothers, and however peculiar such an arrangement was, especially for their generation, the Alaskan frontier had many peculiar personalities, people who didn't fit well into the mainstream of American life. An ex-WWII-fighter pilot and his grease-monkey girlfriend hadn't been the most unusual, even in 1947. So she asked me a lot of questions about how I'd rebuilt the Corvette, and I took her out on a back road where I dropped the pedal, making her squeal like a schoolgirl as the speedometer passed a hundred and twenty miles an hour. She just shouted for me to go faster. My father, I thought, had come by his wild and contrary nature honestly. My own was more like my mother's - sober and responsible to a fault. I was the one who returned the car to a normal speed after a couple of miles, worried about getting caught by the cops. "What's the use," she told me, "in having a car like this if you don't enjoy it?" But I'd had to take care of myself for so long, so young, that I found it hard to risk. We were an inverse of the usual family equations. She might have been seventy-three years old and confined to a wheelchair, but there was a spirit in her like a hawk - hooded and jessed by circumstance, but still wild. "You can't tame a wolf, a whale, or an Indian," she told me.

We visited my parent's graves together, and she wept, but it didn't hurt like I'd expected, maybe because I knew their bones weren't really there. I got down on my hands and knees and cleaned away the overgrown grass from the gravestone edges while she watched from her chair. Mary Katherine Summers and Major Christopher Scott Summers. There was a picture of the Madonna on her side and the air force symbol on his. I cleaned off my grandfather's grave as well, Lieutenant Colonel Philip Scott Summers. I hadn't realized my name had belonged to them both.

We put some flowers on the graves, and she scattered tobacco while she sang something I couldn't understand. Her English was easy and colloquial with little or no accent, but every once in a while, she'd lapse into her native tongue, which I'd discovered was Tlingit. And if a crucifix hung above her bed and a statue of the Blessed Virgin stood on her dresser, there were also native wood carvings and other small signs of her heritage scattered about her room. She didn't discuss it much, but she hadn't abandoned it, either. My father had been a different story; I hadn't even known what tribe he was - a fact that seemed to sadden, but not surprise her. "He hated being Tlingit," she said. "The white boys made fun of him for his native face, and the brown boys were worse for his pale skin. It was bad back then. He learned to throw a solid punch."

That, I thought, might have explained a lot.

The blood ran thin in me. Not only did I have my mother's temperament, but I looked more like her, as well, pretty in the same porcelain-doll way (however damning for a boy), with an Irish nose and a touch of auburn in my hair, eyes that had been bright blue once and pale skin, though with a bronzy-yellow tinge that I'd never understood until now. I didn't look Indian, not really, but the hints were there in the shape of my mouth and chin, and in cheekbones that jutted sharp across a broad face. Some of my ancestors had fled from the potato blight in Ireland, some from political turmoil in Germany, but some had sailed the Pacific in small cedar canoes, hunting whales. How ironic, that I'd gone whale hunting myself (after a fashion) on my way up here. My grandmother found that portentous, and tapped me on the chest. "Your heart knows who you are. Don't be afraid to listen to it, Scott. The whales called to you." I resisted rolling my eyes.

So I dallied in Anchorage through the end of September, getting to know my grandmother. The more I discovered, though, and the more she talked, the more I began to understand what wasn't said. Her initial explanation of why she'd not been given custody of Alex and me had been only partial. Apparently, my parents' wills had specified that she _shouldn't_ be, and alcoholism was only part of it. I suspected that, if I'd been sent to live with her all those years ago, I'd have wound up raising myself anyway, and watching out for her and Alex, too.

I kept in contact with Xavier regularly, calling every few evenings. I knew this wasn't easy for him. He feared losing me to a rediscovered family, and the psychologist in him warred with the man, wanting me to know them, but understanding that I'd lost some of my dependance on him. "She may be my grandmother," I told him at one point, to reassure, "but sometimes I feel more like _her_ parent. She can tell me all this stuff about my dad's family, and about my mother's, too, for that matter, but, well, honestly, sir, I think she's a bit of a _flake_. Am I allowed to say that?"

Chuckling, he responded, "Yes, Scott, you're allowed to say that."

We made a few arrangements for her care. I couldn't stand seeing her in that cheap nursing home, sharing a room with a delirious woman. I was embarrassed to ask Xavier for help, but he offered, and I wasn't too proud to accept for my grandmother's sake. I even considered taking her back to New York with me, but met with unusual resistance. "This is my home. This is where I grew up. I don't want to move to New York. I don't know New York." So we moved her into a Catholic nursing home instead, a nicer place, closer to the parish. She had her own room, and it was possible for her to attend occasional functions, picked up by the church bus. That settled, I felt better about leaving, and made arrangements of my own to head back east around the first of October. My home wasn't here any more than hers was there.

On the Saturday before I was to depart, she asked me to take her down the coast to the Tlingit reservation north of Juneau, where she'd been born. She said she needed to go back to visit her family just once more, but it was a long drive - Alaska was a huge state - and I wasn't sure what they'd think of me anyway. My grandmother was a member of the Dakl'aweidi clan of the Eagle band - the clan of the Killer Whale. "I told you the whales called you to me," she said, grinning. "Nothing happens by chance." And if the cynical, hyper-rational part of my mind was inclined to disregard that, another part wanted to believe, wanted to belong. Trouble was, clan descent passed through the _mother_. So my father had belonged to the clan, but I didn't. The most she could give me were use-rights to the totem.

Yet I agreed to take her, and discovered that she had no intention of driving. "We're boat people, Scott." Well, boat people or not, it was a bit late in the year for impromptu canoe trips; we took the ferry from Seward down the Inside Passage to Alaska's southeast region and I spent most of the trip at the rail, gaping at the scenery and enjoying the water. I couldn't get enough of the sea, and maybe there was something to her mumbo-jumbo about my heart knowing who I was. Her youngest brother picked us up at Juneau's port and took us back to his small house north of the city. We arrived in late afternoon before dinner, the sun still well up. It wouldn't set until after seven; this was Alaska. The street and front yard looked like a parking lot, and despite the chill in the air, the back was full of tables covered by cheap plastic tablecloths, paper plates, pots of food, and people gathered in clumps while children dashed to and fro, shouting. "What the hell is going on?" I asked. My grandmother had an impish grin on her face.

"It's time to meet your family," she told me.

She'd been the middle child of nine, seven boys and two girls, in a family who'd taken the French name LaRue along with French Catholicism. All had married and had children (my grandmother alone producing fewer than four), and all those children had had children, who'd had children. Thus, I found myself facing a veritable army of relatives. There must have been over a hundred people there of varying ages, sizes, skin tone, hair color, and clans, but all related to me by blood or marriage. They greeted their seldom-seen sister with enthusiasm - she was the reason for this gathering - but when she said, "This is my grandson, Scott," they included me as well with little fanfare, filling my plate and ushering me to a place of my own at the tables. A place of my own.

It wasn't how much one had, but how much one gave that mattered. Giving made us rich, and with all that I'd received in the last two years, I understood at last that the best return I could ever make was to serve others with the same generosity - not because I owed them, but because I didn't. Mercy didn't keep tabs, and it never sang a capella.

* * *

><p><strong>Notes:<strong> Security measures, obviously, reflect pre-9/11 days. There is a Holy Cross parish in Anchorage, but neither Father Ackerson nor Father Oberlin are the priests. Thanks to sterling for some city detail corrections; all errors are my own. The bit about planes in the Rockies is true; I lost a cousin, a very experienced pilot, to that very same phenomenon, and his body was never found either.

**Summers Family Details:** In the comics, both Scott's paternal grandparents turned out to still be living. I've modified this to suit myself and tried to produce a reason more believable than Mr. Sinister for why he wound up in foster care. A big nod to Lelia Burke, et al., for background information on both Chris and Phil Summers. Almost nothing is known of either Scott's mother's family, or his paternal grandmother's, but because in at least one place, his mother is called 'Mary Kate' (not just 'Kate'), and that's such an _Irish_ name, I conjectured she's at least partly Irish. Deb Summers is simply a blank who one could fill in however one wished.

As I've said before, the Indian blood in Scott's family is not my invention; I simply like to play it up for obvious reasons - write what you know - and James Marsden's facial features makes that easy. (As he's an Oklahoma native himself, I wouldn't be the least surprised if he's a part blood.) In any case, no tribe was ever specified, or even what side of Chris' family it came from, perhaps both. Paul Smith always drew Chris looking _very_ Indian (imo). There may be Cheyenne on Phil Summers' side (an ancestor knew Black Kettle). As for Deb Summers ... humor me. A number of single, pioneering men who arrived in Alaska, post-WWII hooked up with Alaskan natives, just as French fur trappers had done 300 years before in the US and Canadian east. But the children of those unions were displaced, welcome in neither world and often resented by both - an attitude unconsciously bolstered by their mothers' mixed memories of res life. Shame is a terrible thing.


	14. Green Eggs and Ham

I came home on an overcast Tuesday afternoon in mid-October, back in time for my eighteenth birthday. I came _home_.

It was a quiet advent. Warren was away at school, Hank was off doing interviews for a post-doc at the University of Chicago (which would put him closer to his parents), and Jean was buried in medical school. Only the professor was there to welcome me back, but that was all I needed. I drove through the outer gate and up the gravel drive to find that he'd come out on the wide porch, having sensed my approach. He didn't say anything in my head, didn't wave, but he was _there_, and it was first time that anyone had been there like that, like a parent, waiting for me to return. I stopped the car in front instead of following the drive around to the garage, and got out. We just looked at each other across fifty feet of pavement, concrete and lawn.

"Welcome home, Scott," he called aloud, and I mounted the steps then, bending to embrace him. He hugged me back. "Park your car and I'll meet you inside."

I nodded and did as he said, lugging bags and boxes back to my room, where I found my fountain and pictures awaiting me. Unpacking enough to fetch the present I'd gotten for Xavier, I went downstairs for dinner, handing over the carved bone whale, a totem done in the Tlingit-Haida style. He examined it with great interest, and later that evening, it went upstairs with him to his own rooms, not to his office. In later years, I came to realize that his office was for gifts from students. His rooms were where he kept family things.

We sat down to eat then, and it was nothing exceptional and everything wonderful because I was home. After that, life returned to a quiet passage of days interrupted by small celebrations and surprises - the kind of existence that most people lived. This was what 'normal' felt like. Two years ago, I wouldn't have believed this could be my life. I was healthy, I had a future and a home - I was heir to the whole goddamned estate. I felt . . . okay. Even optimistic on most days.

And in that spirit, I finally applied to colleges - including Yale. I didn't expect to wind up in 'Sunny New Haven'; it was mostly a ploy to silence Warren, but the fact I applied at all was a step I wouldn't have been capable of the previous year. And I recognized as much.

Now that I was eighteen, I decided I should get a job as I wasn't in school, but Xavier called me into his office in early November, and we had a frank conversation. "When you were living in Omaha, I understood your need to work, but there's no need for you to take a job now, Scott."

Uncomfortable, I folded my arms and looked out the oak-cased window at the gardens beyond. "I'm not contributing anything. I'm just . . . living off you."

"I'd like to think I'm more than your landlord."

The slight edge in his voice made me turn and look. Nothing showed on his face, but sometimes I could read his tone. "I didn't mean to imply that, professor." I never called him 'father,' but 'professor' had that connotation for me, a peculiar term of endearment to suit our peculiar relationship.

Sighing, he motored over beside me and spoke without looking up. "The families we're born into come with years and years of learned expectation - for good or bad - which we don't have. You may have become my son, but you weren't born to that role and don't know what it entails."

I was a little hurt. "What does that have to do with me pulling my own weight? Other kids my age work if they're not going to college - and some work even if they are."

Backing up the chair a little, he regarded me thoughtfully. "Other 'kids your age' are not an Xavier, even by adoption. Quite honestly, Scott, you don't need an outside job. _I _don't need for you to have an outside job. I need you to learn to run this estate and assist me. I've been doing it alone a long time. If you want to contribute, _that_ is how you can best contribute. This place doesn't run itself."

I felt my face color. I'd never even considered that. "I'm sorry, I didn't realize -"

"Hush," he said. "Of course you didn't realize. That's why I'm telling you. You needed to prove things to yourself on your own terms. And I think you have."

He searched my face, to see if I'd agree. Slowly, I nodded.

"Very good," he said. "Then it's time to show you what goes on around here." And thus, I embarked on a new adventure, learning to manage a 296-acre estate and a 650-million family trust.

And I discovered that I liked it. I wasn't any good at figuring the stock market, but honestly, neither was the professor; he let his brokers handle that. It was the management aspect that I enjoyed. Parts of estate affairs had been sliding because Xavier couldn't do it all alone, even with a steward and groom and gardener, so I took over the outer estate, the land itself, which had remained intact for over two-hundred years. Xavier wouldn't consider selling off portions, even if few neighbors still had this much of a spread. He seemed to think it might be useful one day - and perhaps he had a bit of prescience along with his telepathy to foresee the future straits of mutants even then. Nonetheless, it was costing us a pretty penny in property taxes for what was essentially forest and underbrush.

So I proposed that we re-cut the riding trails on the back hundred acres beyond the lake and rent it to the surrounding stables. With a little initial investment in a brush-cutter and MERI crusher plus monthly summer upkeep - and the appropriate legal contracts to cover insurance - the land might earn us something.

As my first proactive suggestion, I wasn't sure how it'd go over, but I'd investigated the idea thoroughly, and now held my breath as the professor looked over my plans. Finally, he turned and considered me. "You really think this is a good idea?"

"Given the current rate of development up here, good trail land is getting harder to find. A hundred and nine undeveloped acres is pretty attractive. There's no reason for that land to sit out there unused, and with the lake in between us and it, we'll still be able to maintain our privacy."

I caught the faint twitch of his lips, then he said, "Very well. See to it."

"Yes, sir." And rolling up maps and plans and cost projections, I headed for the door, relieved.

Before I reached it, he called out, "Scott." I turned back. He was smiling now. "A very clever suggestion."

My back straightened unconsciously with pride. "Thank you."

It wasn't long after that, Xavier brought up something else. We'd continued the quasi-formal counseling sessions that we'd been having almost since I'd arrived, but one day he said to me, "I think it time for you to consider a real therapist, Scott."

Taken by surprise, I retorted, "Aren't you a 'real therapist' or is the Ph.D. just for show?"

He simply smiled. "I may be a licensed psychologist, but you've become more than just a patient - if you ever were that." He had a point; most therapists didn't name their patients as their heirs. "Furthermore, your . . . situation isn't something in which I have a great deal of training. Being a mind-reader does _not_ make one an expert."

Turning my head sideways, I eyed him. My 'situation' sounded annoyingly sterile, and if he'd just said I wasn't his patient, I suddenly felt like one. "You mean you don't have experience dealing with ex-prostitutes and you're not sure what to do with me now."

"You resort to baiting when you feel insecure."

"Don't tell me what I feel -"

"Then don't attempt to bait me."

Annoyed, I rose up to stomp around a bit. We were in his office, and it was a little after noon. The sun was warm, coming in the window past the heavy velveteen curtains. He sat off to one side of the desk and watched me. "I realize," he said after a while when I refused to speak, "that the prospect of going to see a stranger about something this personal is daunting."

"I'd have to explain everything all over again," I replied, flapping my arms in impotent anger. "You already know what happened. Why should I have to tell somebody new?"

"How we talk about our past is an act of self-interpretation, and that's valuable in itself. You spoke of 'telling someone new,' but in fact, Scott, I'm not sure whether you've _told_ anyone yet. We've all learned about your past either by default, or in bits and pieces, or both -"

"I told Warren," I interrupted defensively.

"Perhaps, although I'm not sure how much you told him."

"I told him enough -"

"- enough to draw his own conclusions so you could avoid explaining. Since the beginning, you've told 'enough' to avoid telling more - which was fine, at the time. You weren't ready to talk about it."

"And now I am?"

"You lived on your own all summer, traveled to Alaska alone, and proposed a clever new business project for our estate. Yes, I think you are, Scott."

Fists on hips, I just glared for a long moment, then said, "What if I don't want to? It sounds awful. I mean, come on - 'I was a teenaged prostitute who sucked cock for money.'" I made my tone presumptuous, and thus, ridiculous.

But he refused to let me made a joke of it. "Yes, it does sound - and _was_ - awful. And you're able to recognize that now."

Exasperated, I tugged at the back of my hair with one hand. "I knew it then, dammit! Don't you think I knew it then?"

"Of course you knew it. But you were trying to survive, and couldn't afford to think too much about what you were doing, in order to keep doing it - so you _could_ survive. A Catch-22. You dissociated."

"Well now I don't want to 'sociate' at all. I just want to _forget_ it."

"You can't."

"You're damn right I can't, because you keep bringing it up!"

"Scott, you can't forget it. Do you remember what I told you once? There's no way around it, over it, or under it - only through it. You have to go through it, in order to truly leave it behind."

"I already went _through_ it!" I screamed. "I lived it! I was the one who got fucked _every goddamn day_! What do you know about what that feels like, you self-righteous prick? How can you sit there and tell me I have to go _through_ it again?"

I was close to sobbing in fury and hated myself for that, and hated him for pushing me to the brink. "Scott," he said softly, "I _don't_ know what it's like, and that's exactly my point. I don't know, and you need a therapist who does."

Collapsing back into the chair in which I'd first been sitting, I just glared at him from beneath my bangs.

"This isn't something you can shove into a box and ignore," he went on. "I'm amazed by how far you've come; you're a very strong young man. But you're ready to move on."

"_You're_ the one who keeps dragging all this shit back out!"

"No, Scott. You've only begun to deal with 'this shit.' You needed so many other things first - a sense of safety, a sense of belonging, friends. You couldn't begin to deal with 'this shit' until you had those things. But you've stopped jumping when someone walks into a room behind you, you let people touch you without freezing up, you've quit burning yourself on candles, you eat when you're hungry instead of limiting your food intake to have control over something, and you don't explode in fits of rage over relatively minor annoyances. Most of all, you've stopped being passive about your life."

I blinked; I hadn't been aware he'd been watching so closely - but of course he had.

"All of that tells me you feel safe; you've reached a point of equilibrium. You're ready."

"Ready for what? To screw everything over by dredging up the past?"

"You're ready to find a firmer foundation. So yes, I think it's time to upset the applecart . . . so you can restack it more securely."

"How about just throwing a tarpaulin over it?" I suggested, only half sarcastically.

"Because if the apples aren't secure, they'll just dribble out from under the cloth," he replied, smiling as if to say, 'Nice try; no cigar.'

We were silent then for some minutes. He wasn't made nervous by silence, which annoyed me. I wish I knew how he could do that. I rubbed my hands together and jiggled my leg, and thought. Finally, I said, "All right. When do you want me to start this therapy? Next week?"

"Oh, nothing so soon. You'll want to talk to therapists yourself and pick one with whom you feel the most comfortable."

"You're not just giving me to someone?"

He frowned. "No. Scott, I'm not 'giving' you to anyone. I'm not passing you off." I blinked; I hadn't even thought about how I'd phrased it, but it was clear the wording upset him. "I'd like you to find someone who can help you in ways that I cannot. As you yourself noted - I _haven't_ been through what you have."

Now it was my turn to frown. "I was just being a jackass," I told him.

A small smile touched his features. "Being a jackass or not, you were also being honest. You need a therapist who understands what you're experiencing."

I made a noise of disbelief. "I bet there are just loads of psychologists who used to be hustlers."

He shook his head at me. "Psychologists are often wounded healers, Scott. Like bones, we can become strongest in the very places we were broken."

* * *

><p>But I didn't start searching for a therapist immediately. The holiday season had rolled around, and with only the two of us living at the mansion now, Thanksgiving was a quiet affair, as was Christmas. I'd have liked to visit my grandmother, but flying to Alaska in the dead of winter could be problematic, so she suggested I wait for spring. The day after Christmas, Xavier accepted the Grey's invitation to drive up to Annandale-on-Hudson instead. I wasn't enthused. "It won't be for long, Scott," he told me as we loaded luggage into his Rolls, but my anxiety wasn't assuaged. I'd learned to hate holidays at other people's houses.<p>

We took back roads past mansions and stables and older farms, many decorated for the holidays. When we arrived at the Grey's, it was a two-story brick Tudor with a red door and icicle lights hanging from the gables, strings of white lights crowning bushes. At least, I assumed they were white; they all looked pink to me. Parking the Rolls in the drive (and wouldn't that get second glances from the neighbors?), I opened the door to the modified rear seat where the professor's traveling wheelchair had been stowed. The house wasn't handicapped accessible, so the collapsible version was required. Getting it out and opening it, I wheeled it around to his side of the car and helped him into it. He didn't like assistance, but accepted it from me, and that told me as much about my place in his house as my name on the will. He'd have to accept a lot of assistance from me over the next three days, in fact, and I realized that I wasn't the only one for whom this visit meant a certain amount of embarrassment, yet the professor hadn't even mentioned it, and I was suddenly ashamed.

It didn't wind up being as bad as I'd feared. Even if the Greys good-naturedly tried to make us feel 'like family' in a family we weren't a part of - 'No need for you two to rattle around all alone in that big, old mansion' - it didn't grate on me the way it had in foster homes. Xavier and I had each other, and we'd already had our family Christmas.

I'd found him waiting for me in the foyer on Christmas Eve, ready for Midnight Mass, just like the year before, and Warren had arrived shortly after with the limo, to pick us up. The previous year, it had been their way of honoring the fact I had a past of my own; I didn't exist solely as an object in their lives. But this year, it'd been less about my past than about our future. Attending Midnight Mass was no longer just something I'd done as a child; it was something _we_ did, and would continue to do, and having that sense of commonality binding us made it easier to be guests in someone else's home at the holidays.

Quaint and eclectically decorated best described the house. It was old, with narrow halls, hardwood floors, and high ceilings. The doorknobs were glass and the sink fixtures in the bathrooms were antique. The paneled wooden doors and window casings weren't painted, but I liked best the old French doors that opened onto a back patio full of potted plants. Elaine Grey was an amateur gardener, as well as an amateur antique collector of depression-era glass, which she displayed in Amish pie safes. John Grey collected model trains. They were stacked everywhere from the top of an old (ivory-key) piano to any bookshelf that had a bit of spare room. He also collected picture books, mostly of military history, and that was what led to my last Christmas present that year.

They gave it to me at dinner the final evening, a large rectangular package, which, even wrapped, seemed rather obviously a framed picture. I couldn't imagine what it was. First of all, I was surprised to get a present, at least from anyone besides Jean, since the holiday was over and part of the reason for coming up afterwards, I'd been assured, was so that no one felt obligated to buy presents. But I was further baffled by the explanation. Xavier said, "John stumbled over it quite by accident, in one of his books, and Jean confirmed it."

"And the professor knew who to write, to get hold of a copy," Jean added with a smile. "So it was a joint project."

My curiosity thus piqued, I unwrapped the gift only to find an enlarged copy of a Kodak color photograph that must have dated to the 1970s, showing my father - _my father_ - standing at the center of a group of grinning, uniformed crew along with another man. Both were dressed in white flight suits, helmets under arm, and behind them lay the black bulk of an SR-71. The Blackbird.

I had other pictures of my father. Family albums had been among the personal items that social services had collected years ago before the furniture had been auctioned off in an estate sale and the base had reclaimed the house. I had several boxes of these personal items. But there were relatively few photos of my father in uniform, and even fewer of him next to any planes in posed publicity shots. And there were none of him with a Blackbird.

"Where did you find this?" I asked once I'd regained my voice.

In reply, John Grey pulled out a big picture book from where he'd set it under his chair, and passed it around the table to me. It was about the history of Lockheed Martin, titled _Skunkworks_. One of the pages had been marked with a Post-It tab, and I opened it to find a much smaller, black-and-white version of the framed photo that I held, with the caption, "Maj. Christopher S. Summers, pilot, Maj. John T. Fulton, RSO, and flight crew, 1977." I would have been an infant, I thought idly. There was an eleven-page write-up about the SR-71's development, but no mention of my father outside the photograph.

"I found that in a used book shop about five month ago," John Grey told me, by way of explanation. "I was flipping through it one night, looking for info about reconnaissance during the Cold War, when I happened to glance at the photo caption and something clicked in my head. Jean had told me that your father was a pilot in the air force, and had served in Vietnam. Summers isn't that uncommon a name, but I didn't figure there could be that many USAF pilots named Summers who'd be the right age. So I called Jean to ask if she knew what your father's name and rank had been and if he'd ever flown a Blackbird. She said the name started with a C, and that he'd been a test pilot but she wasn't sure of his rank. So I called Xavier. He confirmed that it had to be your father."

"After that, we contacted the book's author," the professor said, taking up the tale, "to learn where he'd found the original, and see if we might obtain a copy. A few inquiries, a few explanations, and Lockheed Martin sent us a color copy of the original, with their compliments to Major Summers' son."

I was stunned by the story - stunned first that John Grey had happened over it _and_ remembered that his daughter had a friend named Summers whose father had been a pilot. But even more, I was stunned by the fact that virtual strangers had been willing to help recover this photo. I still wasn't used to anyone doing things for me for free 'with compliments,' and if a request from New York old money had helped, the compliments hadn't been for Dr. Xavier's ward, but for Major Summers' son.

"Thank you," I said finally, not knowing what else to say. Xavier simply nodded, while Jean beamed.

"We were glad to do it, Scott," Dr. Grey said.

Later that evening, I was out back having a smoke when Jean unexpectedly joined me. She'd put on a bulky sweater and mittens and hugged herself while her breath made clouds under the porch light like the smoke from my pipe. "You know," she said by way of greeting, "I'd think winter would be a good motivation to quit."

I just eyed her, then blew smoke rings at the night sky by way of answer. After another minute, I said, "Thanks again for helping get that picture."

"It was exciting," she said with a smile. "I know you have pictures of him -"

"But not many like that," I finished.

We didn't speak then for a bit. I smoked; she looked out across her yard. It was cold, and quiet, and peaceful. Finally, she glanced down and kicked at the icy concrete with the toe of a boot. "You look like him, I think," she said. "It's something about the shape of your face. Do you remember much of what he was like, as a person?"

"Some," I told her, and it was a measure of our friendship that she could ask that so boldly, and I'd answer. "My grandmother told me more. He was pretty wild when he was my age, stubborn and independent. But I remember he liked a good joke, and he'd strike up conversations with strangers in line at the supermarket. He must've been one of those 'life of the party' guys." I shrugged. "Sometimes I can remember him being mad, too. He had a temper, but so did my mom. I remember them screaming at each other, and I'd try to get between and make peace or something."

I stopped; I'd all but forgotten those fights, and how they'd made me feel - impotent and frightened. "I can remember Mom pushing me aside and telling me it was okay, they were just yelling and they'd get over it." I took a pull on the pipe. "Didn't make me feel better."

She was watching my face. "Is that why you don't really like to argue? Because your parents did?"

I blinked. "Huh?"

"You pull back. Sometimes you get mad at little things that happen and completely blow your top, but you don't get mad at _people_ much. Remember how you told me once that if I was pissed off at you, I should say so? Well, it goes both ways."

I just shrugged.

"Scott . . ."

"You don't want me to get mad at you, okay?"

"Why? Scared you might hurt me?" It was tossed off half as a tease, half as cheerful mockery, and that annoyed me.

"Actually - yeah."

"Hey, I'm bigger than you, in case you didn't notice. Not by a lot but -" She grinned. I didn't. She really had no idea. I just knocked the ashes out of my pipe and put it back in my pocket while she went on. "Expressing anger, even at people you care about, is normal. I think that's what your mom was -"

I had her slammed up against the wall before she could finish the sentence, one hand in her hair holding her head fast, the other around her narrow throat, and my body crushing hers into brick. She was so surprised, she squeaked. "I didn't learn to fight nice. I learned to fight to survive. I control myself for a damn good reason. If I lost it, I could _hurt_ you, even without the beams. And the last thing I want is to beat-up on my best friend." I let her go, gently, and moved back. "Don't provoke me just to get a reaction. It's not a good idea."

She looked at me as if she'd never seen me before and if that stung, I had to wonder if it might not be a good thing. "I'm not trying to scare you, but sometimes you act like this is an After-School Special. I'm not a _nice person_, Jean."

The fear washed out of her expression, replaced by annoyance. "No, you're not. Sometimes you're a real son of a bitch. But you're a _good_ person, and that's what matters. I've told you that before, and I'll keep telling you until you believe it. Control is a wonderful thing. But turning yourself into a pressure cooker isn't. You've got to find ways to let off steam, Scott, and I don't think it's just the street that made you that way."

"Psychoanalyzing me?"

"Maybe a little."

I shook my head and looked away, out over the yard. "Xavier wants me to go to a new shrink. He says I'm 'ready' for it - whatever the fuck that means - says he can't do it himself and I need somebody who knows what I'm 'going through.'" I pantomimed air quotes around the last two words.

"He thinks he's too close to it - to you," she said. "He's afraid he's not objective anymore."

"I know what he's afraid of. But the more I think about it, the more I'm not sure. He says I need to tell someone my story - that it's important, the telling. But the problem is, if I tell, it's not just my story. I don't exactly have a _normal_ situation, and I don't mean the street stuff. If I tell somebody my story, I'd have to explain not just my own mutation, but Xavier's and Warren's and yours and Hank's. I don't think the professor thought of that."

"I think he probably _did_. But there's this little thing called 'client-therapist confidentiality.'"

"I know all about that," I told her. "Foster care." She looked embarrassed to have forgotten. "I also know the legal limits. Therapists have to report suspected child abuse, and any threats of harm to anyone. I'm not inclined to off myself, so that's not an issue. And I'm not molesting little boys, so that's not an issue, either. But I did murder someone - three someones - and the professor did some kind of weird mojo so I never even got questioned about it."

Her head turned sideways and her jaw tightened. "That was self-defense, and even then, it was an accident. All the details didn't come out because it would have wound up being hugely complicated, but trust me - there are people in the police force who know exactly what happened, agree it was self-defense, and complied with the deep-sixing. The case was _closed_, it will never be reopened, and you did not _murder_ anyone, Scott Summers."

I stared at her hard but she met my eyes behind the glasses until I looked away first. "Okay, but there's still the issue of other people's privacy - including yours."

She hugged herself again and admitted, "I'm not thrilled about you telling your therapist I'm a telepath - people get freaked out by that. They think the TK's pretty cool, but telepathy?" She shook her head. "Still, you don't necessarily have to tell everything about us, or use our real names. Call me Elizabeth if you want; it's my middle name."

"That might work with you, and Hank - but Warren's pretty distinctive, pseudonym or not, and using a pseudonym with the professor is pointless."

"The professor is the one who suggested you get a therapist in the first place. You know what I think? I think you're looking for excuses."

I pulled my head back a bit, surprised. "No, I'm not. Those _are_ legitimate concerns -"

"Sure, they are. And they're also pretty easy to work around. You don't have to tell the guy -"

"I'm not going to a guy."

"- whoever - everything right off the bat. Feel out the person. And this isn't about me, or War, or Hank. It's about you."

"So you think I should do it, too?"

"Hell, yeah."

"Even if I tell her about you?"

"Hell, yeah. You can tell her all about your friend _Elizabeth_." She wrinkled her nose at me playfully and I put an arm around her, leading her back inside.

* * *

><p>We returned to Westchester the next day, and Jean rode down with us. Warren's family was throwing a party for New Years and he'd begged us both to come, so of course we agreed. Xavier had his own shindig, and sent Jean and I off in my Corvette to Warren's party. I was reminded of the time two years before, when the three of us had stolen away to bowl on New Year's Eve. I'd worn my new freedom then as awkwardly as my new suit, but tonight, I wore a tux and escorted Jean in a red, backless dress. The party was full of half-sloshed people I didn't know drinking martinis and talking on cell phones, and we spent twenty minutes hunting Warren in the crowd.<p>

"Boy, am I glad you're here," he said in an undertone when we found him, and then he dragged us about and introduced us to people I'd never remember. Paparazzi took our pictures, though they were more interested in Warren and Jean than in me, and I was happy to step back out of the camera eye and let them shine. I thought they made a pretty pair, and if Jean wasn't Warren's formal date, when midnight rolled around, she still got a New Year's kiss full on the lips. But she surprised me by turning in Warren's arms to plant one on me, too, where I stood beside them.

We both stayed that night at Warren's, sleeping in his room. In fact, so many guests stayed that rooms ran out, even in that house. Thus, the three of us - very tipsy on tequila shots - wound up in Warren's bed because it was the only one left. We stripped out of our fancy clothing and climbed in, passing out more than falling asleep. When I woke the next morning, I found myself squeezed between the two of them, one of Warren's wings covering us all. Maybe I should've been embarrassed - all I had on was underwear - but I had to piss too badly and my head hurt. By the time I got out of the bathroom, Warren was up, too, and we traded places. Jean still snored on the sheets, sprawled on her stomach, one of Warren's t-shirts rucked halfway up her back so her red bikinis showed. I plopped down next to her and rolled on my side to look into her face. Her mascara had smudged overnight, and her cheeks were flushed from the room's artificial heat. She had funny ears with almost no lobes, and reaching out, I touched one. Making a noise of protest, she turned her head away, and grinning, I rubbed her bare back instead, feeling the invisible hairs over soft skin. She seemed to like that, and wiggled up against me. We both went back to sleep, my arm around her waist.

We stayed for a week on Long Island. Warren's parents (and the other guests) left the morning after the party, so it was just the three of us in a house full of servants, yet we continued to sleep all tangled up in Warren's bed, bare limbs intertwined under heavy winter blankets. What the servants thought, I have no idea, but no one said anything about our _menage-à-trois_. Wealth excused eccentricity. Our arrangement was astonishingly platonic, however, simple and pristine, even while being deeply _intense_. We were young and ardent and sensual, given to impassioned professions and physical affection that stopped just shy of the erotic. Balancing on the cusp of something recklessly complicated, we lived in the now and enjoyed our unconventional triangle. Yet on Sunday, we went our separate ways, knowing even then that we'd never recapture that peculiar alchemy. It belonged to the idealism of young adulthood, which circumstance and social mores would force us to leave behind. Jean went back to med school, Warren went back to Yale, and I returned to Westchester and a list of four therapists to interview. I can't say I was eager.

But I had my questions all ready. The professor had helped me prepare them, though the idea of interviewing a therapist struck me as both amusing and daunting. "You have to feel comfortable with this person," Xavier told me. "You're hiring them; they're not hiring you." So clutching my list, I showed up on a Monday afternoon for my first appointment. The therapist was a woman in her mid-forties and it was a no-go almost from the start. She had all the right credentials and plenty of experience, but I just couldn't talk to her. So I tried the next name on the list, to a similar result. I felt intimidated, or over-sympathized with, and I wondered what was wrong. "Try Jonathan Bennett," Xavier advised. Bennett was the sole male name on my list.

"He's a guy."

"And?"

"It's a _guy_."

He smiled faintly. "So am I."

"You're different."

"Mmm," was all he said. But a few minutes later, he added, "You may find it easier to talk to a man about certain things, Scott. Or you may not. But you can't know until you try."

"Would you like them in a house? Would you like them with a mouse? Would you eat them in a box? Would you eat them with a fox?" I retorted in a sing-song.

Xavier chuckled, but answered, "You do not like them. So you say. Try them! Try them! And you may."

"I do not like green eggs and ham," I retorted, and we didn't talk about it again. I interviewed the third woman, and if I felt neither intimidated nor smothered, I wasn't excited, so on the following Tuesday afternoon, I called the office of Dr. Jonathan Bennett and made an appointment. I didn't tell Xavier, and drove myself alone into the Bronx for the interview, my worn list of questions in hand. It was late in the afternoon, almost suppertime. Intake interviews were often late in the day in case they ran over. It turned out Bennett was black. I'm not sure why that surprised me, but it did.

I asked him about his training, and whether he had any experience with prostitution, not just child sexual abuse. He caught my eyes behind my glasses and said, "What's the difference?"

"I consented? I made money at it?"

"Bullshit." He'd pulled out a pack of cigarettes and now lit one. I'd asked if I could smoke, and he'd said I could smoke if he could smoke. So I had my pipe and he had his Newports. "How old were you, when you hit the street?"

"Fourteen."

"Runaway?"

"Yeah. From foster care. But I'm legal now," I added, because I had a young face.

He waved the hand with the cigarette. "So you were fourteen. Not a lot of options for fourteen-year-old runaways. You an addict?"

"No, no." I felt nervous and shifted in the chair. It was overstuffed and comfortable, if not quite a couch. He had a couch, too, but it didn't look much used. The chair was opposite his own seat at a big L-shaped desk, and an end table stood at my right hand. His office was in his house, but distinct; it even had a little waiting room adjoining. The main office where we sat now had been decorated in far-eastern themes with a bamboo screen and rice-paper artwork. He had a fountain with rocks and a bonsai tree. I'd jokingly asked, when I'd arrived, if he were a Buddhist or something, and he'd smiled, replying that he believed in Feng Shui. I didn't know what that was, but didn't ask; I'd look it up later.

"A lot of them were on something," I said now, "but not me. I used a little - mostly pot, no blow, no crystal meth, none of that shit. Bought some acid once - weird crap. Didn't do that again."

He was nodding. "You like to stay in control." It wasn't really a question.

Glancing down at the pipe in my hand, I raised it. "I guess this counts as an addiction."

"Always a pipe?"

"No. Cigarettes at first."

"Why a pipe now?"

"Pipe tobacco has less of the bad stuff, so it seemed like a smart move. And I like making a pipe." I shrugged.

"Different image, too," he said.

"Yeah, it's a different image," I agreed, expecting an analysis, but he didn't pursue it.

"So you were fourteen, on the lam, with a pretty face and not a lot of options -"

"I could have hustled pool. I did for a while. Hustling my ass was easier."

He watched me for long enough to make me uncomfortable and I opened my mouth to reply, but had nothing to say. Or things to say that I didn't want to admit. "I'm not _pathetic_," I said finally.

"And I don't pity you," he replied. "But even if turning that first trick was your own idea, you didn't have a lot of choices, and if some bills changed hands at the end, that doesn't alter anything."

Xavier had told me the same - several times - and intellectually, I knew he was right. But - "There's a difference between what I did and Johnny Straight-A-Student whose scout master feels him up in a back room," I pointed out.

He shook his head. "More bullshit. Listen to me - being a hustler doesn't make you any _less_ a survivor of sexual abuse. How it happened, how many times it happened, whether you got paid - those are details. Important details, but don't let them get in the way of the _essentials_, okay?"

He continued to watch me through a haze of smoke, then said, "Nothing you say is going to shock me," he went on, "and I'll take you just as seriously as Johnny Straight-A-Student. Nor, for that matter, would I take Johnny Straight-A-Student less seriously than you. That's not how I operate. And a couple other things, while we're on the subject - I'll never touch you without asking your permission first unless it's to restrain you from hurting yourself, and I'll never touch you intimately in any way. I'll never ask for sexual favors or expect to meet you for drinks after hours. Likewise, if you offer sex, I'll tell you you're not my type." He grinned faintly. "I'm your therapist, not your date."

I'm sure my face was stark, but I was also relieved to have it all right out on the table; Xavier had done the same thing, when I'd first arrived at the mansion two years ago. It made things easier.

"What you say here will stay here," Bennett went on. "This isn't court-ordered therapy, so I'm not required to report to anyone but you, and you can end the therapy at any time you choose. I hope you won't end it prematurely, but that _is_ your prerogative. It's also your prerogative to look at your file any time you want. I make notes as we talk, mostly for me, but you're welcome to walk in and ask for them, and we'll look at them together.

"Now, because this is voluntary therapy, I'll need you to fill out some forms, and sign an informed consent. I want you to read the consent carefully before -"

"I know all about that stuff. Been there, done that. I'll sign the form."

He snorted, but it sounded more amused than annoyed. "And you'll be real careful about what you say to me for a while."

I raised an eyebrow. We understood each other. But then he shook his head and stubbed out his cigarette. "Look, just to be clear from the beginning, though I doubt you'll believe it for a while - I'm a lot more interested in your healing than in siccing vice cops on you for past actions, or in going after the guys who solicited you, or anything you did to survive out there. This is about _you_, not the perps."

That sounded a lot like what Jean had said and I rubbed the bridge of my nose below the glasses. Now came my next hard question. "Okay. Do you know what mutants are? Would it bug you, to work with one? Mutant as in having an X-gene, I mean." While the general population still didn't know much about mutation, the medical community was another matter.

"I've heard of it. You -?"

"Yeah, me." I tapped the glasses. "If I take these off, I'd give you a new window to match that one." I thumbed at the big bay behind me. "I have these eyebeams; they punch holes in things. They're _not_ lasers," I added, because that was the usual assumption. "The glasses control them, though. I'm not dangerous."

"What if the glasses fall off?" But he didn't ask as if he were scared, more as if he were curious.

"Uh - they don't. They're pretty tight. And I have a visor that fits even tighter. You could knock the glasses off, but they're not going to just fall off. And I'm pretty good at shutting my eyes."

"Then you're blind? Without the glasses?"

"Yeah. You don't want me to open them otherwise. I'm the definition of 'If looks could kill . . .'"

"Must be terrifying."

I just blinked at that. "Uh - yeah."

"How long have you been stuck with the glasses?"

"A little over a year and a half."

"You can't take them off at all? You have to sleep in them? Shower in them?"

"I have goggles to sleep in, or shower in. I can't turn off the eyebeams, no." I tapped the back of my head. "Brain damage." I shook my head. "It's a long story."

"I'm listening."

So I told him. Not everything - not by a long shot. But I told him the basics - how I'd been orphaned, a little of what had happened to me in foster care, and why I'd run. I explained that I'd wound up at Xavier's because I was a mutant. Bennett asked me point blank if Xavier had ever demanded sexual favors and I said no. He accepted that at face value, though I was pretty sure we'd come back around to it later, just like my old case-worker had. I didn't tell him about Erik Lehnsherr, or how I'd gotten the professor's name, and he didn't ask. I was sure we'd get back to that, too.

But however abbreviated the story, he was the first therapist with whom I'd gotten this far. It seemed I'd found my counselor. That he was male surprised me enough to wonder if Xavier had set me up, so later that evening, I asked the professor, "How do you know Jonathan Bennett?"

He blinked at me. "You went to talk to Jonathan?" I nodded, and he managed to avoid smiling. "I know him by reputation only, Scott, although I spoke to him at length on the phone before putting him on your list."

"So you didn't put his name down because he's, like, some ex-student of yours?"

"Scott, really. I don't know _every_one."

"Sometimes it feels like it," I told him. He only chuckled.

* * *

><p>I spent the rest of that winter and spring meeting with Bennett once a week. He characterized his therapy style as "whatever works" - pragmatic, not ideological, and I think that's why I picked him in the first place. He wasn't like the professor, and reminded me of nothing so much as a sleepy-eyed sloe. He'd lean back in his big leather seat with his cigarette and his eyes half-shut and listen as if he were bored, then suddenly speak up with an observation that shocked me with its perceptiveness.<p>

It took me a while to get around to my time on the street. He let me talk about where I was now, and my experiences in Nebraska before I'd run. He was patient. I walked around and around the sixteen-and-a-half months I'd spent hustling, getting a little closer with each session. Still, I resisted. "It was ugly and there's not a lot to tell. For some of it, I was too strung out to remember." Bennett didn't push. He said I had a lot of other things to process.

Yet rather than become more centered as our sessions went on, I became less so, as if I'd regressed. Any little thing set me off, and I had nightmares now, too; some days I felt as if I were drowning. Jean and Warren worried. Xavier didn't, although he was the one I woke up at night, screaming (mentally as much as vocally). He'd come to my room and turn on my CD player to lute music, then sit patiently until I went to sleep again. I have memories of his shadow by the window, the orange burn of his pipe picking out his profile.

The nightmares weren't of my time on the street. They came from earlier - flashes of the accident that had orphaned me, or the helplessness of sleeping in that split-level in midtown Omaha, my second foster home after the family in Kearney had been forced by economics to give us up. I'd been the new boy in a house with three foster kids already, and a big, big secret. I'd been shockingly naive, having no idea grown men did things like that to eight-year-old girls. But I wasn't a stupid kid, and it didn't take long for me to put the pieces together. I tried talking to the other boys in the house, who told me to keep my mouth shut - at least it wasn't us. I'd hear his feet coming down the hall to the girls' room, and she'd cry afterwards, like a sacrificial lamb. So one night I took a butcher knife to bed and waited until I heard him, then snuck out to stab the son of a bitch while in the act. After that, the truth spilled, like his blood all over the floor, and my arms and chest and face. It spurts, if you hit an artery. He didn't die, though, so I got off with just assault in exchange for my testimony. I'd had a good lawyer, and the judge had been sympathetic, so I was sent to Boys' Town, and anger-management therapy, instead of juvie.

I told Bennett about that and he replied dryly, "Gee - can't imagine why you might have been pissed off." That's another reason I liked Jon. He was irreverent. "But what would you do differently today?"

"Use a camera instead of a knife," I replied without hesitation, and Bennett laughed.

"Why didn't you go to the police, though?"

"Tyler wouldn't," I said. "I promised to go with her and back her up, but she wouldn't go. And if she wouldn't go, and the other boys wouldn't testify, what was the point in me doing it? Yeah, now I know they have to check out that stuff, but I didn't know that then, and if she wouldn't testify against him, the charges wouldn't have stuck. At least stabbing him when he was in her bedroom with his pants down kinda proved my accusation."

Bennett grew unexpectedly serious. "That's important, Scott, to recognize what you knew at the time and how it contributed to your decision, and not to blame yourself for what you didn't know - but also to have learned from the experience. I think you realize _now_ that stabbing the guy wasn't the best choice you could've made. But there's a difference between learning from an experience - recognizing what went wrong, or at least what could have gone better - and being weighed down by guilt from it. One's proactive, the other's handicapping."

That was how our conversations would go, and thus, he gradually pulled me around to new ways of thinking about myself, and what had happened to me. "You've been in combat, Scott. And like a lot of combat vets, you're dealing with post-traumatic stress."

It was a comparison I'd never have thought of. "You've got to be kidding me. Combat vets wouldn't want compared to hustlers."

"Doesn't make it invalid. Like war, prostitution creates its own world where reality gets skewed in order for you to continue doing what you're doing, and those outside the life have a hard time understanding it, just like non-military have a hard time understanding the military mindset. In both cases, it's tough to re-enter the 'normal' world. In the military, though, they put you through discharge classes called 'military separation' - teach you how to become a civilian. Exit classes for prostitution are few and far between, and mostly for women."

I snorted, astonished. "You mean there are such things?"

"Oh, yes. But the life conspires to keep you from hearing about the programs, or trying to leave." He pulled open his top drawer and rummaged a moment, then found a business card, which he tossed to me. _Streetlight_, the card said. "I think you're past a lot of what they offer, in terms of services, but you might be interested in attending their group meetings."

I shook my head, but I shoved the card in the pocket of my shirt. I had an idea. I was young then, and impulsive, but I was also by nature disinclined to navel gazing. I felt a need to do something. So three days after that session, I showed up in _Streetlight_'s Manhattan office. It was a small suite on the seventh floor of a building not far from Times Square. I asked if the director was there, and a woman came out. "I'm Andrea Chow. How can I help you?" She was striking with features half-Asian and half-black, and cautious, too, hovering near the edge of a counter - probably with a finger on a concealed cop buzzer in case I was an angry pimp. "I'm not here to hurt anybody," I told her. "I heard about this place from a guy named Jonathan Bennett."

"Yes, I know Jon." Chow eyed me. "Did he send you here to ask about programs?"

"No, he just told me about it. I wondered if you had more cards - like this?" I held up the one he'd given me.

One delicate eyebrow went up, but she nodded to her secretary, who turned to a cabinet to get out a box. I was offered a handful of business cards, which I took and pocketed. "Thanks." They had brochures, too, and I took some of those. At no point did I say I'd been in the trade, and the two seemed content to let me be semi-anonymous. They didn't even ask my name.

"People don't know about this place," I told them. "Well, I mean, not the right people."

Chow smiled, as if trying not to be offended. "We work at getting the word out."

"Yeah. And I'm going to help." I offered her my hand. "Thanks."

She shook it. "Be careful."

"I know my way around."

"I'm sure you do," she replied easily. "Still be careful."

Nodding, I left, then went to meet Jean for supper. The professor knew I was in the city, but I hadn't told him what I was really doing, and seeing Jean gave me an alibi of sorts. Why I thought I needed one, or kept my plans to myself, I couldn't have said, but I wanted to do this on my own. I remembered how it had felt to rescue Warren two years ago - how powerful that had made me feel, how worthy - and I wanted that feeling back. I'd been insanely lucky, and couldn't stop thinking that I might still be out there, or be dead, if not for the chance of my DNA. So now, I felt pushed to act.

I went back to the 'fag stroll' I'd worked. Streets were generally segregated by sex, and divided up by pimps, most of whom specialized in girls or boys, but a few kept both, like Jack. I figured I'd start with people I'd known. Turnover is heavy, but I assumed I'd still recognize a few faces; I just wasn't sure where they'd gone. After Jack had died, his stable would have scattered with much choosing up at clubs. So I drove about slowly, looking for a familiar face. My red, antique Corvette screamed 'money,' and some of the guys whistled or waved. I stayed in the car, relying on the shadow and my glasses for anonymity. I was quite sure I was marked.

Finally, I spotted a kid about my own age named Jeremy but called Stone. He'd dyed his hair pink, and he was thinner, and taller, but I recognized his prominent nose under the slick glow of neon lights. Pulling the car over to the curb, I beckoned and he popped the friend with whom he was standing, then strutted over to the car. "Yo."

"Get in."

Leaning down, he peered in the window. His eyes were puffy, like he'd been snorting a little too much before work. "Whoa - _Scott? _What the hell? Get out of here, man."

"Get in."

"I'm working, you ass."

"So? I'll give you break. Get in."

He breathed out, but walked around to the other side of the car and got in. "You are so dead. And I am so fucked if anybody sees us together."

"We won't go where anybody's gonna see us."

"I don't got a lot of time, man. I have to make quota."

"How's a bill?"

He gaped. "_Fuck. _You got that to throw around? Word is you punked Jack's ass and squared. You looking to get back in?"

"No way in hell." I drove the car out of the Village and headed towards SoCo, the area south of Columbia, along Amsterdam.. We didn't talk. He'd turned his head to watch lights and people and cars, as if apathetic, or too spaced to concentrate on conversation. After a bit, I said, "I did square. And this is my own car. And I have a bill to throw you, just for talking to me for half an hour. You want to know how to get out, too?"

This was my version of a flash roll - the conspicuous display by pimps looking to bump the girls or boys of other pimps. Jeremy probably wasn't my best choice for a first try - he seemed to have turned into a crackhead - but he was the first one I'd recognized. Now, he didn't reply as we pulled into a garage, parked, and got out. I'd dressed for tonight, too - Jean had asked earlier what was the occasion - in fine linen pants and a black silk shirt with a tie. It wasn't the staid wear I kept most of the time, but it wasn't too flashy. Just expensive. Like the car. Jeremy looked me up and down as we walked to Mama Joy's, where we fought the cramped crowd for coffee, then went strolling down Broadway. I pulled a brochure out of my pocket and a small stack of cards, handing them to him. "If you want out, go here," I said. "Even if you don't want out, take these and pass them around. Other people may."

He glanced at the cards, then the brochure, and made a face. "You're full of shit, you know that? You wanna get me jacked up? I'm with the Colonel now."

"You don't have to be with anybody. You _can_ leave, Jeremy."

He jerked his head around when I called him by his given name. "You were half-square then and you're really square now. Who's gonna fucking pay my _leaving fee_? You got ten grand in your breast pocket? Or you gonna come down and kill the Colonel, too?" He threw the cards and brochure back at me; they scattered in the wind, trampled instantly under the feet of other pedestrians. "Blow it out your shit hole. I'm not stupid. I know what happens to people who run - same thing that happened to _Marianna_." He stressed the name and I flinched, looking away. Leaning in, he said, "Give me my fee and then leave me alone, diss-bitch. I'll take the subway."

His words burned. Weaving between streams of moving people, I made my way over to lean against the brick wall of a shoe store, closed at this hour, and pulled out my wallet and the promised hundred, which I folded around one of the cards and put it inside the napkin I was carrying from Mama Joy's. He'd followed but avoided watching me, acting jumpy and scanning the crowd as if there might be cops about. Now that he'd decided I really was on the other side of the street and decidedly uncool, he just wanted his first break so he could get back to work. I handed him the napkin. "Don't spend your cut on snow," I told him.

"Bite me," he said, pocketing the bill (with card), and left. Sighing, deflated, I finished my coffee and meandered back towards my car.

I tried a few more times - I was stubborn in addition to impulsive - but other receptions were similar. By the fourth try, no one would even come near the car. Some of the boys made cat-calls and shot birds my way. Word gets around. I'd gone from the guy with enough juice to take down Jack O' Diamonds to the equivalent of a vice cop. So I tried a different car; that just got spotted, too. Furious, I stalked down to the dock when I got back to the mansion that final night, stack of useless cards in hand, and flung them all into Breakstone Lake. Maybe the fish would listen better.

Xavier, of course, found out about it. At dinner the next night, one of the _Streetlight_ brochures was set next to my plate. Sitting down, I picked it up and turned it to face where he sat across from me. The table was a big, long thing, but we always sat at one end, across from each other, no one occupying the head seat. He was cutting a pork chop and didn't look up. "Are you pissed?" I asked.

He shook his head. "Other than littering the lake, no." He raised his eyes then, and put a bite of meat in his mouth.

"I wasn't trying to go behind your back or anything, I just -"

"Thought I would tell you not to go back down there."

"Yeah."

"Do you want to talk about what happened that led to confetti on the lake?"

I sighed explosively and dropped my fork onto the china plate, and told him. He listened intently and ate his pork and asparagus. "A commendable effort," he said when I'd finished.

"But a total waste of my time."

"How would _you_ have responded two years ago?"

"I'd have listened! That's why I went down there - back then, I didn't know programs like this existed!"

He didn't reply, just went back to his pork chop. So of course, I had to think about it, and I remembered what Jeremy had called me - "half-square even then." It was true. I'd spent my extra cash on books instead of drugs or alcohol. I couldn't judge what others would do based on what I'd have done.

Finished with his dinner, he set aside his fork and folded his hands, studying me a moment. "You weren't especially typical, no, but even so, imagine your response if you'd been offered a stack of cards to pass around to fellow hustlers about a program for exiting prostitution? What would you have said to the person who offered them?"

"But I lived it!" I protested instead of answering. "I'm not some . . . born-again evangelist trying to 'save their souls.' I _know_. I know what it's like, and I know you can get out."

He was relentless. "Think, Scott. You stayed here at the mansion two-and-a-half years ago only because I offered you sanctuary a long way from the street. You didn't think your pimp could find you - or a stack of cards in your apartment, or hear you talking to others about leaving the life."

"And I was wrong, wasn't I?" I said bitterly. "He did find me."

His voice softened. "That wasn't my point. And I don't blame you for that."

"But it _was_ my fault. Just like it was my fault Marianna died." Rising, I walked away from the table. Jeremy had been right. Why would anyone trust me? I got people killed.

"Scott!" he called after. I ignored him. _Scott, you tried to help then, just like you're trying now. That's_ admirable_. But instead of playing the Lone Ranger, why don't you check the 'volunteer opportunities' in that brochure? You may have experience on the street, but they have experience getting people _off _of it._

So I went back to _Streetlight_ and talked to the director about volunteering. I'd learn later that I wasn't the first ex-prostitute to have tried what I had - with as little success - and that the majority of their clients came from court-ordered referrals. It took a radical interruption, like an arrest or hospitalization, before most people were willing to change. I'd learn to measure success in smaller increments, and that I couldn't rush others through a change of perspective that had taken me two and a half years to achieve.

Yet I wasn't at all sure what I had to offer. "They have these 'guest speakers' at their group sessions," I told Bennett at my session that week. "People who used to be in the life come to talk about leaving. But I hate public speaking, and it's not like my experience is normal. How many multi-millionaires are going to swoop down and offer them a room in his mansion?"

Jon shook his head. "You're less atypical than you think. Yeah, some details are a bit out there, but you've been through the foster care system, you've done the group-home thing, you were a runaway, and you turned tricks to survive on the street. Those are experiences you share with a lot of kids. There are ten thousand others out there like you, and I wish to hell I was exaggerating numbers, but I'm not. Girls and boys. Baby trade."

"But how I got out - that's different."

"Yes and no. You got offered a chance - and you took it. You got the legal snarls ironed out and you learned new ways of coping. You changed how you dressed, and how you thought about yourself. You made friends. Then you earned your own money at a legit job, and kept your own apartment. _That's_ the part that matters. _That's_ what others need to hear. And that's what you were essentially trying to tell your old friends from the street - here's a chance, take it - but they weren't ready yet to hear you. These people in the program - they might be ready. They've got a chance now, too. What they need is to see somebody who took advantage of his chance and made it out.'"

"I'm no good at standing up in front of people period, never mind to talk about that."

"So don't do it that way. I'm not sure you're ready for that, either. One-on-one is a good place to start. You might even consider joining one of the affirmation groups yourself."

"Why? I've been out two-and-a-half years."

"And you're only now re-connecting with people who know what it was like. It's important to be able to talk to others so you _don't_ feel as if you're isolated. Like the mutant thing. You've adjusted to that remarkably well - but you've been surrounded by people who share the experience and helped you cope. This is no different. You could always try a group for a couple sessions, and if you didn't connect, you could drop back to individual therapy."

That made me sit up. "You mean I'd stop seeing you?" I hadn't realized until that moment how much I'd come to depend on seeing him once a week to straighten out my head.

"No, no." He waved a hand in negation. "I'm not suggesting group replace individual therapy. I'm suggesting you try that in addition to individual therapy. They offer different things. You're going through some intense feelings right now, and memories. I think you might benefit from both."

So I tried group therapy as well as individual, and also spent one extra night a week, helping out at _Streetlight_. I washed dishes after the Wednesday Night Supper, and talked to the participants. Jon had been right - I wasn't peculiar, or I was less peculiar than I'd thought. Perspective is an amazing thing, and I was finally starting to gain it with regard to that part of my life. By mid-April, I was able to say, "Yeah, I used to be a hustler, but I quit. I'm going to college next year."

Which college I was going to remained to be seen, however. I'd already received acceptances from a couple schools, but on April 16th, I found a thick envelope lying across my plate when I arrived for dinner with the professor, Yale's seal in the upper left-hand corner. And even if I hadn't given much thought to it since I'd applied - I'd had too many other things on my mind - my stomach still dropped as I picked up the letter and looked at Xavier, seated opposite me. "Do you know what it says?"

"I don't open your mail," he replied with a slight smile.

Grabbing a case knife, I slit one end of the envelope and pulled out the papers inside, unfolding the top one. My hand shook as I read: _We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted to the Class of 2000 . . . _

"They said yes." I sank down into my seat. "Yale said yes."

Xavier pushed his cell phone across the table. "Why don't you call Warren? I think he'll want to know."

* * *

><p><strong>Notes:<strong> Please note that just as Scott's background has changed closer to the comic, so has Jean's. Her parents aren't the same people here as depicted in _Accidental_ and other stories. This Jean is rather more psychologically stable, just as Scott is less so. Many thanks to Lesani (as always) for her assistance with the specifics of sexual abuse counseling. Jonathan Bennett is lovingly dedicated to a former supervisor of mine, Imogene. _Streetlight_ isn't a real New York program, but such programs do exist in larger US and Canadian cities.

Just to prevent confusion, the year for this story is 1996; Scott would belong to the graduating class of 2000.


	15. Lux et veritas

"What do you mean you're not sure you want to go?" said Hank's (astonished) voice on the phone. He'd gotten that post-doc at Chicago, but I still called him occasionally to talk in person instead of by email. "Scott, it's _Yale_."

"I know. But it's not the only place that accepted me."

"Let me see if I recall your list correctly - CUNY, Fordham, Bard, Marymount . . . and Yale. With all due respect to those other fine schools, including Dr. Grey's Bard - it's _Yale_, Scott. Now, if this were a question of Yale, Columbia or Princeton, I might understand. Or if there were a particular professor with whom you wanted to study somewhere. But Scott - Yale or _CUNY_? Come on."

I'd been picking at a hangnail on my left hand while I let him prattle. He didn't understand. So I said, "Yeah, I guess it's not really much of a contest."

"Of course it's not. Besides, Warren must be ecstatic."

I smiled tightly. "He's pretty excited, though he keeps telling me he knew I'd make it. I just hope he didn't buy my way in."

"Scott-" It was reproving. "Don't you believe Warren thinks better of you than that? And don't you think better of him? We _all_ believed you had a good chance of being accepted - all but you."

"I guess I fill some quota for high-risk admits."

"You know, Scott, sometimes you make my brain tired. You fight everything good that happens to you, even if you earned it." And he hung up on me.

He was right, and I wasn't sure why I insisted on being cynical. "Conditioning," Xavier told me when I dragged myself down to the solar, feeling depressed and angry. "If everything that had happened to you had been bad, then you'd accept anything good at face value. If everything, or most everything, that had happened to you had been good, then you wouldn't doubt another good event, either. Instead, your life has been characterized by periods of safety upset by periods of extreme danger in a repeated pattern. If bad things happen to you _sometimes_, regardless of what you've done to avoid them, then there's no consistency for prediction - no reason for you to believe something bad won't happen again."

I listened to this with interest. "You mean I'm always waiting for the other shoe to drop?"

"Exactly. Furthermore, because there was often little or nothing you could do to escape tragedy and difficulty, the only conclusion you could draw was that there was something 'bad' in you that deserved these bad things . . . or that the world was insane and unreliable."

"The world is," I replied.

He smiled. "Yes, of course. But that's not something children are ready to process. It's not something _most_ of us are ready to process. We all know, intellectually, that 'anything' can happen . . . but we can't live that way. We can't exist long with such high levels of uncertainty - so we attempt to impose order on our worlds. We're meaning-seeking, meaning-making creatures. We want answers, and we'll find them."

"Even if we make them up?"

"It's not invention, Scott." He shook his head. "We look for patterns in the random mass of facts that make up our daily lives. That's _interpretation_. Yet we can interpret new experiences based only on what's happened to us in the past. And sometimes we miss facts or overlook details because our emotions run away with us. I don't find your interpretation of events surprising, given your history. You're not reacting illogically. But one of the goals of therapy is learning new, more helpful and more accurate ways of interpreting."

"What you mean," I said, "is that something can be logical and still be wrong."

"Yes." The faint smile again. "Though I might say 'incomplete' rather than 'wrong.' You tend to take a negative interpretive approach. Why? Because your previous experience has taught you to remain on guard. That was a coping mechanism that worked for you in those circumstances. But your circumstances have changed."

"And my coping mechanisms don't work any more."

"What do you think?"

I threw up my hands. We always wound up at that question - what did I think? - whether it was Xavier talking, or Jonathan Bennett. Intellectually, I understood why, but it still frustrated me. Sometimes I just wanted someone to tell me what to think because I was tired - even though I would have resisted any such attempt tooth, nail and claw, and I knew as much. I didn't always make sense even to myself, but both Xavier and Bennett had realized that I responded best when I was asked to think. I needed to be reasoned with, not just reassured.

"Okay," I said. "Yeah, I see your point. I tend to assume things aren't going to work out - even if lately they have most of the time. I guess I'm afraid that the bigger the build-up, the bigger the fall, you know?"

"Which isn't an unreasonable fear. The question, I suppose, is whether you want to let it paralyze you and keep you from taking chances? Personally, I believe that human beings are inclined by nature to hope, not despair. Despair is a learned response, not a natural one, so you have two inclinations at war within yourself. You want to hope, but have learned to fear to do so."

I nodded, almost vigorously. That was it exactly.

"Therefore," he went on, "rather than dismiss your fears as unreasonable - because they aren't - why not look at them reasonably instead of just submitting?" That was a novel thought, and I was curious to see what he'd say, so I nodded again. "Very well then - if you go to Yale, what's the worst that you can imagine happening?"

"That I'll flunk out."

"Fair enough. Yale isn't an easy school. Anything else?"

I thought about it. "That someone might find out what I was. That I might get Warren in trouble. That I might make him look stupid for having me as a friend."

Xavier nodded faintly, as if I'd confirmed something. "Now, let's address each of those. What would happen if you did 'flunk out?'"

"I'd have to come home."

"And what would you do then?"

"Be useless."

"What about trying one of the other schools that accepted you?"

"Well, yeah, maybe. But what if I flunked out of them? I'm not sure I'm really up to college. And even if I am, why tempt fate? Why not go somewhere I'm less likely to flunk out of in the first place?"

"Because you don't know that you _will_ do badly at Yale - you only fear it. Don't lose track of your own reasoning, Scott. That's what despair does - it turns a fear into a presumed certainty in our minds. Right now, we're dealing with your _fears_ of what _might_ happen. It's a possibility only; not even a probability, much less a certainty."

I blinked. "Okay."

"Now, are there any other fears related to having to come home?"

I thought about it. One thing seemed obvious, but I was reluctant to say it. Finally the silence weighed heavily enough on me to force it out. "That I'll disappoint you."

"You won't," he said quietly, but as a reassurance rather than a negation. "I'm proud of you for having been accepted, Scott. But do you know what makes me the most proud?" I shook my head and he went on, "The fact that you applied at all - that you tried."

That surprised me - even while it didn't. It also had a corollary. "So you'd be more disappointed if I didn't try Yale than if I flunked out?"

He tilted his head sideways and I got the impression that I'd caught him from behind. "That wasn't how I intended it. And the answer is no. I would be proud of you for trying Yale. But if you decided not to, I'd understand why."

"But understanding doesn't mean you wouldn't be disappointed." I was a terrier with a rag.

"Scott, your job is not to avoid disappointing me. Your job is to avoid disappointing _you_."

I had him; he was deflecting my statement rather than answering it. I'm not sure why that pleased me, but it did. Maybe I just needed to know he was human enough to be disappointed by things. Even if I appreciated his wisdom, sometimes I needed him to be my father rather than my therapist. I needed to know he responded to me emotionally, not just intellectually, and I was learning to be proud of myself by making others proud of me.

"Now, Warren," he said, to angle me back around to the original thread of conversation, and I let him. "You're afraid that people may discover that you were a hustler, and that would embarrass Warren and make him desert you?"

It sounded colder, rephrased that way, but I had to nod agreement with the summary.

"How do you think people might discover what you once did?"

"Well, it's in my records. I mean, Carol knew." My old caseworker.

"In fact, it _isn't_ in your records, Scott. And those records are sealed, in any case."

"It's not in my records?"

"No. You were never arrested for solicitation; it's not formally in your records. Your records contain your arrest for assault when you were thirteen, as well as the judge's decision _not_ to remand you to a holding facility. It also includes your flight from Boy's Town, as well as your two arrests for petty theft" - shoplifting - "which are misdemeanors. And the assault charge is fully explained. The judge makes it clear that she saw you as a child trapped, not a violent delinquent. And now that you're eighteen, those records are sealed. You're starting over."

"No record is really sealed," I pointed out, "not with enough money."

"That presumes that someone would have an interest in going to great trouble to unseal it. Which in turn assumes enemies that you haven't even met yet." He folded his hands in front of his face. "Again, it's one thing to explore possibilities - it's another to assume they will occur simply because they're possible. While these things are _possible_, I don't find them very probable, much less likely. Now as for Warren, what was his reaction to learning about your former situation?"

He'd been upset - but upset for me, not at me. Defensive, not accusatory. I looked away. "It's one thing to hear it privately. It's another for all his friends to find out what I was."

"How much credit do you think Warren places on those kinds of social judgments?"

None. I knew that. He'd defied social convention for me from day one. Looked at positively, I could chalk that up to genuine friendship. But I also realized that he liked defiance, and might even enjoy it if my secret did become known.

"He'd never tell, Scott." Xavier's voice, interrupting my spiraling thoughts.

"You're reading my mind."

"You're projecting. And once again letting your fears run away with you. Has anything Warren ever done given you reason to believe he'd betray your confidences?"

I had to shake my head.

"So."

"So you're saying I have nothing to be afraid of."

"Oh, I think your fears are real enough - that's the point. They are _real_ fears. But I wanted you to consider rationally what would happen if they came true." He leaned forward in his seat. "The only failure, Scott, is never to try. If you do that, then fear has won. And if I've learned nothing else about you, I've learned how little you like to lose."

So I filled out and returned the bevy of forms that I'd received with my acceptance letter. It seemed I was going to Yale.

* * *

><p>I made plans to take flying lessons that summer. Ever since Warren's suggestion that maybe I'd feel differently about flying if I was the one at the controls, and my discovery that flying apparently ran in the family, I'd been thinking about it. I also made plans to go back to Alaska to visit. Bad weather and my own issues had kept me away, but I couldn't get out of my head the fact my grandmother was in poor condition. I'd just found her but didn't know how long I'd have her, so I wanted to see as much of her as I could, even if she lived a continent away.<p>

To my surprise, however, Warren, Jean and Xavier all wanted to come with me. "I've never been to Alaska," Warren said, which was true for Jean and Xavier as well. "Unless you'd rather we didn't come," Xavier said to me privately later. "If you'd rather have this time for yourself and your grandmother, that's perfectly understandable."

"No," I said, "I don't mind if you come," and surprised myself to find it was true. I wanted the two parts of my life - before and after - to meet; it might help me put them together more easily.

So we made arrangements to fly to Alaska in Warren's plane after the semester ended, but before that, both Warren and Jean showed up at the mansion for a weekend in early-May just after their respective finals. If I'd seen both of them several times independently, this was the first opportunity we'd had to be all together since New Years, and I was both nervous and excited. They seemed to be anxious, as well, and the three of us went riding down the newly cleared trails. It was a perfect day - sunny, warm but not hot, everything in bloom. I still wasn't sleeping terribly well, but things had been looking up of late and my meetings with Jon had dropped back to once weekly. I was surprised at how much being in group therapy was helping, just hearing others talk about their own experiences. I'd even begun to tell Jon about the hustling, albeit less in specifics, more in generalities.

When we'd reached the other side of the lake from the mansion and boathouse dock, we stopped for a picnic lunch. There was no dock on this side, but a nice grassy area cleared of trees. We spread a blanket and got out food. "So how many stables have signed trail-rental agreements for the summer?" Warren wanted to know. He'd been the main person I'd turned to for assistance in my project planning, as I'd wanted to surprise Xavier.

"Not many this year - so far. Just three. It won't even cover the cost of clearing," I replied. I'd been disappointed but Warren shook his head.

"Patience. Costs of maintenance will go down significantly now, and it may take a couple years for word to spread. If you're still not making anything in five years, then it's time to throw in the towel, but this isn't the kind of investment that'll bring instant returns." He'd warned me of the same thing last fall when I'd been planning it.

"He's right," Jean said, digging in our picnic pack for sandwiches, which she distributed, along with Doritos and drinks from a little backpack cooler. Then she lay down with her head in Warren's lap and listened to us discuss advertising strategies for the trails.

When we were done eating, we carefully packed away our trash. Warren and Jean seemed inexplicably nervous again. In fact, they'd been acting oddly all day. Now, trash stowed, they both sat down on the blanket in almost identical poses - knees drawn up and arms wrapped around them. I plopped down across from them, leaning back on my arms, legs out. "Okay, spill. You're both angsting about something. Is it the therapy stuff again?"

They exchanged a glance and Warren shook his head. "No, not exactly. We just - we need to tell you something. We debated whether maybe one of us should do it alone, one-on-one, so it didn't seem like we were ganging up on you or something, because we're not, but, well, that would make it like it was going to change the three of us - like you were closer to one of us than the other, but that's not how we are, the three of us." He finally paused, having said all of that in one breath.

Utterly baffled, I looked from him to Jean. "What?" If it wasn't therapy, I had absolutely no idea what they were blabbering about.

Jean reached over to grip Warren's upper arm. "Scott, we, um, Warren and I, we um . . . we want to start seeing each other."

My immediate reaction was to burst out laughing - half in embarrassment, half because I hadn't seen this coming until right this minute. I'd been too wrapped up in my own concerns all spring. But now that I thought about it, even at New Years, there hadn't been a time when I'd been alone with one of them without the other present, though there had been a few times they'd been alone with each other. They seemed taken aback at my reaction, so I swallowed my amusement and said, "Since you _see_ each other all the time, I assume you mean you want to start _dating_?"

They nodded. "This doesn't change _us_," Warren added quickly, gesturing between me and the two of them. "Everything we said at New Years - about the three of us - it won't change that. And we didn't want you to be afraid this would mean you were a third wheel."

"You'll never be a third wheel to us, Scott. _Never._"

"So we wanted to tell you _together_, so you'd know it _was_ still the three of us. It's just, uh, kinda changed between Jean and I. I mean, what we feel changed direction a little."

"It's even you who brought us together," Jean said. "I mean, we were so worried about you this spring, we were checking in with each other every day, and pretty soon, we were talking about other things . . . and it kinda snowballed." She looked down at the blanket and smoothed wrinkles while I leaned back, hands behind my head, and let them talk themselves in circles.

"When we realized our feelings were changing, we decided to see if it might go somewhere," Warren added, when I didn't reply.

"But not without talking to you first," Jean said. "Otherwise, it'd feel as if we were . . . going behind your back or something. So we decided we needed to talk to you together first. You're not mad are you?"

"No, I'm not mad."

"Are you sure? First you laughed, now you look kind of . . . too calm."

I raised just my head to look at them both. "Do you guys realize how long I've been _waiting_ for you to get it together?"

They both blushed furiously, smiling at each other, then me. "So you're really not mad?" Jean asked. "And you don't mind if we start dating?"

"I'm really not mad. And you don't need my permission to go out with each other."

"We're not exactly asking permission," Warren clarified. "But I don't know . . . it would've been weird not to talk to you about it first."

"Fine," I told them. "You talked to me." And we lounged on the blanket together for a while, Jean's head on Warren's stomach, mine on hers, and Warren's on mine.

* * *

><p>"I don't know why this is bugging me so freakin' much!" I declared as I entered Jon Bennett's office on Wednesday after that weekend. "It's stupid! I told them it didn't bug me!"<p>

"Want to hang some qualifiers on those pronouns? Maybe answer 'who' and 'what'?" Jon asked as he watched me fling myself down in the chair and open a new pack of Camels, tapping one out. In the past few months, I'd gone back to cigarettes. The pipe seemed hokey all of a sudden, just as I'd taken to wearing t-shirts and cargo pants instead of button-downs and chinos. The preppy look just wasn't me; I felt dirtier than that.

It took three tries to get the cigarette burning, then I blew smoke impatiently. "My two best friends have started dating each other. And I want them to. I've been waiting two-and-a-half fucking years for them to wake up and notice each other, or at least for Warren to notice Jean."

Abruptly I froze, realizing that I'd accidentally used their real names. Bennett just shook his head and motioned for me to continue. "What's said here, stays here."

And by this point, I believed him, so after a pause, I went on, "Jean's liked War forever, but he liked me. Now, he's finally noticing her, and I'm _happy_ for them! I am! They said nothing's going to change between the three of us and I know they mean it. So I don't know what the hell's _wrong_ with me!"

And I recounted the whole conversation for him, explaining in a bit more detail about the week after New Years, and our relationship up to that point. When I was done, Jon said, "It sounds to me like you're feeling betrayed."

"No!" I insisted - because he was right. "I _wanted_ this. I _wanted_ them to get together. They deserve each other, and I mean that in the best way. Jean really knows Warren, and I know she loves him, not his money. And War will treat Jean well. I don't feel betrayed.

"Of course not." Bennett watched while I lit my fourth cigarette. "Your two best friends have started dating after you've been playing matchmaker for over two years - and it happened without your help and when you weren't even paying attention because you had your own emotional things to work through."

"You make it sound selfish," I accused, glaring at him from behind the glasses and smoke.

"No, you're trying very hard to be generous and reasonable and gracious and avoid looking at what you do feel."

"But I don't want to feel spiteful and petty!"

"We all feel that way sometimes, and if you don't recognize it and let yourself be aware of it - and of _why_ you feel that way - it's going to sneak up and bite you on the ass." He let me sit there and chew on that for a few minutes, before he said, "Now, let's start over. There's some really intense stuff between the three of you - really _intense_ feelings." I nodded. "That was balanced for a while in an equilateral triangle. There may have been some suppressed sexual attraction between certain legs, Jean to Warren, Warren to you, but it wasn't overt and wasn't reciprocated, so the whole thing stayed balanced. You had a rare thing. But three-way friendships are very, very hard to maintain, and now there's this new reciprocal sexual attraction between two corners that shifts the whole balance, leaving you high and dry. The odd man out."

"But they said they don't want me to feel that way. It's not going to change the three of us."

"But you don't believe that, and neither do they, or they wouldn't be insisting so strongly."

I didn't reply. My eyes burned instead, and I leaned forward in the chair, almost hanging my head between my knees, trying to swallow the sudden sobs tearing up out of my gut. I'd cried in front of Bennett before, but it was never easy, and this came on me unexpectedly. He rolled his chair a little nearer but didn't enter my personal space. He never entered my personal space. Instead, he just sat there with me, leaning forward in the same way, and let me shut my eyes so the tears could come. Everything was ripping up out of me - old fears of being abandoned, rejected, left alone. "I don't want to be selfish," I gasped out at one point. "I want them to be happy."

"But you want to be happy, too. There's nothing wrong with that, Scott. Nothing at all. And the three of you are more likely to hurt each other - whether or not you want to - unless you all get real about what's going on here and forget the Shiny Happy Faces. You can all say you don't want things to change until the cows come home . . . but they're _gonna change_. The three of you need to figure out the new balance."

I sat up finally and stubbed out what was left of my cigarette. It had mostly burned away. Then I wiped at my face under the glasses, ignoring the box of Kleenex on the end table. My nose was running badly, though, so I finally had to blow it before I could talk. "I'm afraid . . . I'm afraid I'm going to get left behind." Bennett just nodded. "They know that," I added.

"Of course they know it. And they're probably very sincere about wanting to stay close to you."

"But they don't -" I stopped, unable to quite bring myself to say it.

He'd leaned forward. "Go ahead."

"They don't love me like they love each other." And that was the crux of it. "I'm the foster kid again."

"Exactly. I'm glad you can see that connection. In any three-way friendship like this where two of the friends become lovers during the course of the friendship, the one not chosen is going to feel 'not chosen,' even if he or she didn't feel romantic attraction in the first place. It's a normal response. But in your case, it's intensified because of your past - and it's important for you to understand that. Your fears and anger and sense of betrayal are all perfectly normal. You're not a bad person for feeling that way - just like the two of them, from what you described, almost certainly feel guilt and worry. And all of you need to let yourselves feel those things - even talk about them - so the positive feelings can be equally real."

"Whoa!" I said, jerking up my head. "I don't want to tell them this stuff! They'll feel worse!"

"But if you don't tell them, they'll wonder and it'll become the big pink elephant shoved under the table. If you can't be honest with them about feeling lost and resentful, they won't be able to believe you if you say you're happy for them."

I hadn't thought about that, and sank back in the chair to ponder it. "But it's going to make things rocky. We'll all be at the mansion all summer."

"Then it's all the more important to talk about it, and for you to think about your own boundaries. If you don't talk about it, it could take a hell of a lot longer to resolve. If you do talk about it, you're right. It'll be rocky for a while. But you'll also be able to work together to save the friendship. If you don't . . ."

"It's not ever going to be the same, is it?" Abruptly, I jerked to my feet and stomped around. "I didn't want it to change!"

"Change is a scary thing for anybody, and for survivors, it can be even tougher."

"Why can't anything be, you know, simple? Why does everything have to wind up so goddamn complicated?" I was yelling.

"Because we're human," he said much more quietly.

I stomped around a while more, but my anger was mostly gone. It had been sharp and brief; I was back to my unpredictable, sometimes violent mood swings. "The thing is," I told him, "I really am happy for them. I know it doesn't sound like it, but I am."

"I believe you. I also believe you're scared and angry. And you'll be able to deal with _all_ those feelings a lot better if you acknowledge them all."

I sat back down and just stared at one of his rice-paper Tao paintings on the wall and listened to his fountain, like I listened to my own at night. He leaned his head back on the top of his leather seat and waited. We sometimes had these long silences in sessions. Finally, I asked, "What did you mean, about my 'boundaries'?"

Dropping his chin, he said, "You said you're all going to be staying there this summer, and you'll presumably be spending a lot of time together. You need to think about what you're comfortable with them doing in front of you."

My face blanched. "It's not like I plan to watch them make out!"

He ignored that. "One of the ways this triangle is most likely to change is in physical expression. Does Jean still get to hug you, or will Warren feel jealous? What about exchanges of affection between you and Warren? He used to have a crush on you. Does Jean know that? Would she be jealous of you?"

"Jean knows Warren's bi," I said.

"But does she know Warren had a crush on _you_?"

I looked off. "No," I admitted. "Well, I don't know. Maybe he told her."

"It's something to talk to him about. Also, you need to think about what may make _you_ jealous. If they hold hands or put their arms around each other - where does that leave you? Would you feel comfortable watching them kiss?"

I really hadn't considered the possibility. "They haven't done anything like that."

"But they likely will. Those are normal expressions between dating couples."

"I don't know how I'll feel," I admitted. "But I don't think they're going to rub my face in it, you know? Besides, watching would be kinda voyeurish and kinky, wouldn't it?" I tried to laugh - make a joke of it.

He didn't. "What's 'kinky,' Scott?"

"Come on, Jon. A three-way? That's kinky. We got extra for that, on the street."

He shook his head. "'Kinky' is a value judgment. It has more to do with our own hang-ups and social conventions than it has to do with some absolute. What's 'kinky' for one couple is normal sexual expression for another. And in rare situations, genuine love might develop between three people. Is that 'kinky' or is that simply atypical? Define 'kinky."

How had we gotten off a discussion of Jean and Warren onto a discussion of sex? I wasn't ready to go there, so I replied, "Kinky uses the whole chicken." His expression was startled, and I repeated the joke in full, "Erotic uses a feather. Kinky uses the whole chicken."

Frustrated, he blew out. "You're avoiding."

"I don't want to talk about kinky sex."

"You don't want to talk about sex period."

"What's the difference?" It was out before I thought about it.

"Mmm." After a long, long moment, Bennett added, "This next week, you might consider if you don't want to know what Jean and Warren do behind closed doors because it would violate their privacy, or because you don't want to think about your two best friends doing 'the nasty.'"

Jaw clenched, I glared behind the lenses. "_You're_ the one who called it that."

"So what would you call it?"

I knew he was baiting me, but I wasn't going to get caught twice. "Making love," I said defiantly.

"Really?" He glanced back at the clock. "Well, look at that. We ran over." He stood up to open the door for me. "Think about what you'd call it this week, okay?"

I wanted to respond with "Fuck you," but there was someone in the waiting room, so I settled on shooting him a bird where it couldn't be seen before I walked out the door.

* * *

><p>I did give some thought to what he'd said, and later that week, on Friday after supper, I cornered Jean and Warren upstairs. "We need to talk," I told them. They both nodded, aware, I think, that my equilibrium had been deteriorating, and now we all climbed into the attic and out on the roof to watch the sunset. Like the time at the lake, they adopted identical poses while I sat opposite, and I knew Bennett had been right about the inevitable changes. We weren't the Three Mutant Musketeers anymore. They were a pair and I was 'the friend.' "I thought I was okay with this," I began. They waited, tense. "And I am happy for you - I want you to know that. That's real. But yeah - I'm kind of . . . nervous, okay? I'm not really sure where things are going to wind up - "<p>

"Nothing's going to change between the three of us," Jean interrupted.

"Yes, it is!" I snapped back because I hadn't finished my pre-prepared speech. "It's going to change. It already has."

"Only if you let it."

"No. It has changed."

"If you don't want us to see each other -" Warren began, but I shook my head vigorously. I'd worried that I might make them feel guilty, but Warren's offer just made _me_ feel guilty, and that pissed me off.

"It's not my choice."

"You're our friend, we don't want this to change that -"

"Then let's be honest!" I yelled at them both. "Maybe if we - I don't know - if we can talk honestly, it'll be real. We can stay real. We can stay . . . us. It just won't be the same us. It's not going to be the same us anyway, and pretending it will be is stupid." The anger came boiling back out again with the fear and the pain. It made me harsh. "You're going to be fucking each other and I'm not going to be a part of that. It's going to change things, and I don't want - I don't want left out."

They exchanged a 'concerned' glance. Warren leaned forward. "Scott, we haven't . . . I mean, it's not what you think. We're not . . . I've barely even kissed her yet!"

I waved my hands in front of my face. "I don't want to hear about that stuff. That's between you two."

Now their expressions were really confused and they exchanged another glance, and it was all weirdly reminiscent of the lake on Saturday. It suddenly occurred to me to wonder if they were carrying on a private mental conversation, then as well as now - 'discussing' me - and I felt doubly excluded. "You're talking about me, aren't you? Up here?" I tapped my head.

"Scott, no -"

"Don't lie."

"We're not lying. And no, we're not really talking about you. We're not really talking."

"But you're talking a little."

Their sheepish expressions confirmed it. I got to my feet and scuttled off across the tile. "Don't do that!" Warren called, his wings had gone out, preparing to launch and grab me if necessary. "Shit, Scott! You're going to fall. Come back over here."

"_This is what I was afraid of!" _I screamed. "You picked each other! I'm not part of that anymore. I'm never part of anything!"

"Bullshit!" Warren yelled back. "_Xavier_ picked _you_ to inherit! He didn't pick us!"

Surprised and still half-crouched, I rotated on the balls of my feet. "I never told you that! And I told him not to tell you that!"

"He didn't. But I can figure it out."

"How? Are you sneaking around -"

"_No. _But I figured it out. Why didn't you tell us?"

Jean appeared astonished. "Tell us what?" she asked him.

"Scott's inheriting. Xavier's giving him the estate."

"Really?" She was gaping at me.

"You're jealous!" I said to Warren, more wounded than I knew how to express. "What the fuck have you got to be jealous of? You're worth more now than I'll ever be. I didn't think you were greedy like that!"

"_I don't fucking care about the goddamn money!" _Warren shouted. He was standing, wings lifted slightly to balance while I had to lean over, fingers touching the roof tiles, hunchbacked like Quasimodo. "My point is that Xavier picked you. Not me. Not Jean. Not Hank. _You. _You're his favorite. You always have been. Don't talk to us about not being part of anything. You're the Golden Boy in this house."

"And you resent it, you son of a bitch!"

"I don't want to! But maybe _I_ want to feel special to somebody, too!"

Jean had risen as well, scrabbling to put herself between us. "Stop it! You're tearing each other up!" She looked ready to cry. "We're not like this! This isn't us!"

"Yes, it is," Warren said, calmly. "This is us, too. The Dark Side of the Force."

I squatted down, agreeing, "People can feel a lot of things at once."

"_This isn't us,_" she hissed again, head bent and hair hiding her face. Her shoulders shook.

I looked down at the tile and rubbed my thumb over red clay. "I love you both. But yeah, I'm angry, and upset, and feel a little left out, and I didn't want things to change but they're changing anyway. And I still love you. And I didn't tell you about Xavier's will because - I didn't want you to feel . . . what you feel. I didn't want you to feel left out. I wasn't trying to hide it."

Warren still stood with wings outstretched, his head turned into the wind so it blew back his hair. "I know," he said after a minute. "I love you, too - both of you - and I really don't care about the money. But Scott's the professor's favorite and I don't want to resent that. After everything shitty that's happened to him . . ." He turned to me finally. "It's time something worked out for you. I'm happy for that. I just . . . I want something good for me, too. And I don't want to resent you because Xavier loves you."

It echoed so well what I felt myself, if in a different direction, that all the anger flowed out of me. I plopped down to sit on the tiles. "Same here," I said. This discussion _hurt_, but I felt giddy with relief nonetheless. Everything wasn't all better, but there weren't any more secrets.

* * *

><p>Things were still a bit tense when, two weeks later, we headed to Alaska.<p>

The fall before, I'd stayed at a cheap hotel, but with the professor and Warren, 'cheap' wasn't on the agenda. We reserved the Neo-Classical suite at the Sheraton Anchorage. Decorated in Romanesque statuary and heavy Renaissance velvet, it had a sitting room, a fully-appointed kitchen, a dining nook, a hot-tub with wet bar, two baths, two bedrooms, plus a fold-out couch. Even with all that space, it still presented a problem of who was sleeping where. I'd assumed that I'd share a room with the professor like I had at Christmas, Jean would get the other, and Warren would get the couch, but the professor put me on the couch and Warren in his room. I was a bit baffled (and maybe a tad offended) until Jean grumbled to me later, "He doesn't trust Warren to stay on the couch. He's playing chaperone, though it's not like we couldn't get a room ourselves back in New York if we wanted to."

We were in the master bedroom with king-sized bed and private bath; it offered her a measure of privacy in a suite full of men. Warren was still with the professor and I'd simply dumped my suitcase by the couch to follow her in and marvel at the ridiculously extravagant decorations. Now, setting down an imported pseudo-Greek vase, I turned to ask, "Do you_ want_ to get a room with him?"

She shot me a glance, but tried for nonchalance. "We haven't yet. It just . . . annoys me that the professor assumes he has to keep us apart under his 'roof.' We're not teenagers."

I shrugged. I wasn't sure it was that simple, but didn't feel able to articulate why, or what Xavier might really be up to. So Warren slept in Xavier's room, Jean had the king-sized bed, and I slept on the couch for two nights until Jean pointed out the absurdity of one woman in such a big bed, and I was welcome to the other half - providing Xavier would agree to it. Rather to our surprise, he had no objections at all, nor did Warren, so I spent the rest of the time sleeping with Jean.

The days we spent tooling around Anchorage and environs with my grandmother. One evening, we brought her back to the hotel for dinner in the suite, and I thought her eyes would pop out of her head when we wheeled her in behind Xavier, but she seemed as amused as she was astonished, and interested in seeing everything, so I wheeled her all around. But when she assumed the extra suitcase in Jean's room belonged to Warren, I casually corrected her and she eyed me. We were alone for the moment; I could hear the others in the room beyond, ordering food and talking about the float planes we'd seen on the lake that afternoon. It struck me how well Warren's deep voice carried. My grandmother leaned forward to crook a finger at me. "Just whose girlfriend is she?" she asked.

"_Warren's_," I said.

She studied my face. "You lie as badly as your father."

"I'm not lying," I hissed, mildly insulted.

"Some lies we tell on purpose," she said. "Some we tell to ourselves."

"Gramma!" I dropped my voice and leaned in, too. "I'm sleeping in the bed only because it's big. She likes Warren. She's liked Warren for a long, long time. She doesn't like me - not that way."

"You didn't say who you like."

"Not her. Not that way."

She just laughed at me and let me take her back out to dinner.

In fact, Jean and my grandmother hit it off remarkably well despite the difference in age, in upbringing - in nearly everything. I'd move her about sedately in her chair, the same as I did for the professor, while Jean would take off running across a parking lot, popping wheelies. It was what one did with a kid, not a woman in her seventies, but my grandmother would squeal and laugh, and I recalled how she'd loved it when I'd taken her racing in my Corvette, the fall before. "She's fierce," Jean told me one evening while we were getting ready for bed. "Like a hawk." And I was surprised because it was very close to what I'd thought.

"She's a little flaky," I replied. She'd insisted on smudging Warren's plane that afternoon, before we'd taken her up in it, some native purifying ritual with burning leaves and an eagle's wing. It stank, and I'd coughed in embarrassment at the hoodoo, though Warren, Jean and Xavier had all waited politely. Then she'd given Warren a St. Joseph of Cupertino medal with the floating friar on the front and an airplane on the reverse, to hang in the cockpit - equal opportunity superstition, I supposed. She gave me one, as well, but it wasn't new like Warren's; it was old silver, and had belonged to my grandfather. "If you learn to fly, you wear this," she'd insisted. "He wore it over Germany in World War II." I'd resisted asking where Joseph of Cupertino had been on the day my parents' plane had gone down.

Now, Jean shot me a disapproving look. "That's not very respectful. She's your grandmother."

"And I love her," I replied, "but she's still a little flaky."

"I think she's interesting - all the things she's seen and done. Why won't she let you bring her back to New York?"

"She says it's not her home. She wants to die where she was born." I shrugged, though inside, it made me angry. I sat down on the bed. "You're the med student. How long does she have?"

She shook her head. "Impossible to say. She's not in good shape physically, but she's also not sick with anything terminal. Even the diabetes isn't as bad as it could be, and under control. She's lost a lot of circulation in the extremities, but she's not suffering from other things like macular degeneration. She's got remarkably good eyesight for a diabetic of her age." She looked up at me. "I wouldn't be surprised if she lived into her eighties, but her liver could start failing tomorrow. I just can't give you an answer."

I nodded, used to uncertainty, however much I disliked it.

Before we left Alaska, my grandmother and I had a final visit, just the two of us, in her room at the new nursing home. "I like your little redhead," she said at one point, turned sideways in her bed so she could face me in the chair beside it.

"Gramma, we've been over this. She's not _my_ redhead."

She patted my hand. "Oh, yes, she is. She just hasn't figured it out yet. And neither have you."

"Gramma -!"

"No, you listen to me. I see who looks at who. You look at her. _He_ looks at _you_." She raised her eyebrows for emphasis. "And _she_ looks at you, too. They don't belong to each other; they both belong to you. Be careful - hearts break easy."

It wasn't reassuring, but I thought about it a lot on the long flight back to Westchester the next day, and when I showed up for my weekly meeting with Bennett, I told him what she'd said. He listened with interest, then asked me, "Is she right?"

"What?" The question surprised me. "No! That's what I told her. But she seemed so sure of herself. She does that sometimes; the professor does it, too. It must be an old person thing."

Bennett chuckled. "Scott, let me tell you a secret - being old doesn't necessarily make someone an oracle. Yeah, the older we get, the more we've seen and the more experience we have, but the elderly can get things wrong just like the rest of us. All she can do is tell you what she sees from the outside - which can be useful - but you have to decide if it's accurate. So - what do you think?"

"Jean's liked Warren forever, and now he likes her, and I don't figure into that equation." I trailed off more than cut off.

"But?" he prompted.

I squirmed in my seat. "War used to like me. That's one of the things my grandmother said - he watches me. I'd hoped . . ." I trailed off again and Jon waited. "What if - I don't know - what if he's just settling because she likes him so much? When we had that fight on the roof, he said he wanted to be special to someone, and that won't be me - not like he wants. Or wanted."

"But he could be special to Jean," Bennett concluded. "You afraid he might be using her?"

I shook my head. "Not in the usual way. He loves her."

"But you're afraid it may be in the same way you care for him." It wasn't a question, but I nodded in agreement.

"I guess I'm not sure anything's really changed," I said. "I'm afraid he still likes me, and he's just trying to make her happy. I don't want them to get hurt."

"What about your grandmother's observation that Jean was watching you, not Warren?"

"Nah - Jean's always liked Warren, from the very beginning. She's not interested in me."

"People's feelings can change, Scott."

I turned to look at him. "So why would she go out with War, then?"

"I don't know. It could be that if she has liked him, as you say, from the beginning, she may feel obligated to respond positively now that he's showing an interest in her. What interests me, though, is why you assume she couldn't be attracted to you? You dismissed the possibility very quickly."

"Why would she? I mean, I'm . . . you know. I was _that_."

"Warren was interested in you."

"Warren got interested before he found out what I'd been."

"But finding out doesn't seem to have changed his feelings."

"If he'd known before, he wouldn't have felt that way."

"Can you be sure of that?" He shook his head. "Scott, you act as if the fact you used to be a hustler is a big wall isolating you from your friends. That's not unusual for survivors. But other people don't necessarily see it as a hurdle to feeling genuine affection for you. You've already accepted that both Jean and Warren feel very intense platonic love for you. It's not a big step to romantic love, and Warren, at least, has felt that before, may still feel it."

I laughed once, harsh. "You think she likes me, too, just like my grandmother does."

"I have no idea if Jean's romantically interested in you. But what I hear from you is a rejection of even the possibility. If you honestly don't think she's interested, fine. You're in a better position to judge. But don't simply assume she doesn't and resist the alternative."

I jumped to my feet, pacing like I often did when upset. "I was a prostitute. I'm younger. I smoke and she hates that. I drive her crazy being cynical."

"I've never gotten the impression the age difference was a factor in your friendship. As for the smoking - she do anything you don't like?"

"Yeah, she takes stupid chances. She'll hop the subway tracks, or jaywalk when there's a big truck coming. And she drives too fast. I drive fast, too, but I'm not hard on my vehicle. She burns my break pads and balds my tires, and she drives fast even around corners in the rain."

He smiled at all that. "So you both take chances with your health, they're just different kinds of chances. It's your time on the street that's the big issue, isn't it?"

I stopped, my eyes on the carpet. "She can't like me," I said.

"Why?"

"Because she can't."

"What if she did? Why does that scare you?"

I couldn't answer. I'd wrapped my arms around my chest and frowned at the carpet.

"Why does that scare you, Scott?"

I hugged myself tighter and bent over just a little at the waist. "She can't like me," I whispered. I didn't want to talk about this. "She can't like me because if she did . . ." I stopped. Jon just waited. Finally, I squeezed my eyes shut and whispered, "I can't like her."

"Why not?"

"She belongs to Warren. She deserves somebody like that."

"That sounds mighty patronizing, don't you think?" Startled, I opened my eyes and looked over at him. "Doesn't Jean belong to herself? And who are you to decide who she deserves? Isn't that _Jean's_ choice?"

"But I'm sick," I said, swallowing. "I'm all . . . sick inside, all screwed up. I have these nasty thoughts." Now that he'd pulled the essential truth out of me, the rest came after like the roots of the weed. "She didn't ask to star in any of them. These thoughts go on in my head. I remember looking at her, at the mall this one time, I looked at her and I realized I'd been fantasizing about her. Her body. That's disgusting. She's my friend. She trusts me to be her friend, but I have these thoughts, and when I jerk off, I'm thinking about her and isn't that like I'm raping her? In my head? She didn't ask for it, she doesn't know I'm doing it, and it's so sick, the things I think about doing with her."

Jon had leaned forward in the chair, watching my face carefully. "What 'things,' Scott?"

"Things. You know - those things."

"No, I don't know. What things? There are a lot of different things."

"I jerk off and think about her touching me. That it's her hand. I imagine it's her hand on me, and that I'm touching her, that I'm inside her, and then I come. And she didn't ask for any of that. How sick is it, to think about my best friend that way when she didn't ask for it? That's rape."

Bennett frowned, and I could imagine what he was thinking - that I was going to turn into a monster like the men who'd used me. "Scott, when you fantasize about her, you say that's rape. Is that what you're imagining? That you're raping her?"

"Aren't I?" I practically screamed it.

"In your fantasies, how does she respond to you?"

"That doesn't matter! She didn't agree to be in my fantasies! That's rape!" I was shaking and felt light-headed.

He raised both hands. "Scott, slow down the breathing. You're hyperventilating. Just focus on the question; it's a simple yes or no. In your fantasies, how does Jean respond to you? Does she want to do those things for you?"

My heart was pounding and I'd started to gasp, and I just didn't want to talk about this. I couldn't think, and all of a sudden, my mind went white. I was aware of Jon moving towards me, or I was moving towards him, but everything went dark and I felt myself falling.

When I woke again, I was lying on the couch; I didn't open my eyes from habit. "Scott?" Jon's voice. Automatically, my hand went to my face to check the visor. "It's on," he said.

I cracked one eye, just in case the lense was broken, but nothing happened, so I opened both eyes and sat up a little. I could breathe now and didn't feel ready to pass out. "What happened?"

"Something got triggered there and your whole body reacted; you blacked out for a minute. It's called syncope - more a psychosomatic stress reaction than anything else in a case like yours. Subconscious avoidance. You didn't want to answer, so you checked out upstairs."

I lay back down on the couch. My head was flat, a pillow under my feet. He waited. After a minute, I said, "You were pushing me about what I did in my head with Jean."

"Yeah, I was. And I'm going to push again. I think we're getting somewhere. Let's dig a little." He glanced at his watch. "We got time. Tell me about Jean in these fantasies."

"What, you want a blow-by-blow?"

"No, I just want to know if, in the fantasy, it's something she wants. Simple yes or no question."

It still took me a full minute to reply. "Yes." I nodded faintly. "Yes, it's something she wants. That's what makes it so sick."

He leaned back in his leather chair, which he'd rolled over by the couch. "Why?"

But instead of answering, I found myself laughing a little. "You've got me right where you want me, don't you? Lying on the shrink couch."

"Now you're trying to piss me off to avoid answering. Won't work. Come on, Scott, talk to me. Why is it sick if she wants to have sex with you in your fantasy?"

"Because she didn't ask for that!" I snapped and rolled away so I was facing the couch back. "When people do it to your body, it's not to you. It's just a body. But I -" I stopped, shaking violently again where I was lying. He waited me out. Finally, I got myself under control enough to explain, "I made her do it - in my head. I made her want it. I twisted her, see? If I was just doing her body, then it wouldn't matter. Or it would, but I wouldn't be twisting _her_. What I did is sicker; I made her want it." I could feel my whole face twisting, too, half in disgust, half in anger. "In my fantasy, I made her want it, like a whore, like when you have to pretend it's fun and you're turned on or you don't get paid and what you want to do is throw up but you can't, you have to fucking smile and jerk off and you can't just goddamn check out of your body because you have to come or you _don't get paid_."

I was gagging and he leaned over to grip my upper arms and haul me upright. "Sit up and center yourself. That was then, this is now. Stay with me, Scott. Stay in the now." I slumped over, but I was able to focus on his voice and stay in the present. After a moment, I nodded, then he let me go. "Good. Keep your eyes on my face, okay?" I did as he said and he nodded again. "Good. Now listen - I understand what you're saying, I understand what you mean, but there's a huge difference between what's a fantasy in your head and what was forced on you in reality.

"Your fantasy isn't real. It's not Jean, Scott. You're not making _Jean_ do anything. You're not even imposing the knowledge of it on her. It's a _fantasy_. Everyone has fantasies. Everyone. It might be a fantasy of winning the lottery, or the Nobel Prize, or being Superman and flying through the air." He grinned, but I couldn't. My face felt frozen.

"That's not the same," I said.

"Yes, it is. In all those fantasies, we still 'make' other people react in certain ways - we turn them into actors in our own private drama. That's okay. Because it's not _real_. It's imagination."

I shook my head. "Yeah, and the stuff I did sometimes was just some guy's fantasy, too."

"But it wasn't. Someone took the private thoughts in his head and hired an underage kid to act it out for him. That crosses the line because it involves someone else against their will."

"But I got paid for it," I protested, feeling disgusted with myself again. "What's the difference between me and an actor?"

"Protection of law and contract. A job they sought out and auditioned for versus one you didn't. There are so many actor wannabes in this town, it's a joke. They line up for cattle calls. Don't know many girls whose life ambition is to become a hooker." I was just shaking my head, about to protest but he overran me, "Yeah, sure, some actresses and actors hand out sexual favors to get jobs or keep them, but it's _illegal_, just like it's illegal for the boss to cop a feel from his secretary. I'm well aware of the grays, but don't let that confuse you about the black and whites, okay?"

I could only stare. I didn't know what I was feeling, or even what I was thinking. I was trying to listen to him and trust what he was telling me but it was so hard. I'd wrapped my arms around myself and had pulled up my feet onto the couch. It was almost a fetal position, and part of me recognized that, but I couldn't make myself unbend or relax.

After a moment, he went on, "It's how we act on fantasies - or don't act on them - that matters. So Jean gets to star in the private movie in your head. That's only a problem if you take it out of your head and impose it on her unwanted. If you took a piece of paper and wrote your fantasy out in graphic detail and stuck it in her notebook - that'd be sexual harassment. Or if you physically forced her to enact the fantasy on threat of her life - _that_ would be rape. But when the fantasies in your head stay in your head? Pfff. That's not rape. It's imagination."

I curled a little tighter and stared at the couch arm while he talked. The fabric was ribbed like corduroy and I thought the natural color might be some shade of wine. I still didn't seem able to speak, or even to concentrate fully on what he was saying. The words blew past me like maple seeds.

"It doesn't sound to me like you were having a _rape_ fantasy about Jean, right?" he asked. "You weren't fantasizing about raping her?"

As if I could even think of doing that to Jean. I shook my head once almost violently without looking at him.

"She was a willing partner?"

I nodded, still focused on the couch arm.

"Then Scott, you just had a run-of-the-mill, perfectly normal, every-guy-has-them sex fantasy. It's not sick. And you're not sick, either."

"But it is, and I am. She's my friend."

"So? Do you love her?"

I thought about that for a long while before turning my head to look at him. "Yes." Completely, totally, absolutely, with everything in me, but I could barely get out that one three-letter word.

"Then why is it sick?" he asked as gently as he could.

"Because it is. Because sex would foul it up. I want it to be pure." I spoke very softly. "Like Plato said - if it's pure, if there's no desire to drag down the soul, then the soul's wings can grow. War's got wings, you know? That's his mutation. He's got these great big beautiful white wings. Like an angel." It was, and wasn't, a non-sequitur.

"You'd like to have wings, wouldn't you?"

"Yeah, but I got the _consolation_ prize - I got these stupid _eyebeams_. I just kill everything. If I didn't have the visor, I'd kill everything. I hate them! What the hell are they good for?" I unfolded a little, turning to face him more directly.

"So Warren has wings, and it makes you think of Plato. But he feels desire as well as love - for you, maybe for Jean - and that bothers you, that he can feel desire?"

I didn't reply, just looked away and curled up again. I'd told him my secrets, secrets I hadn't even wanted to look at myself, and now I didn't know what to do. How are you supposed to react when you've just admitted to being secretly in love with one best friend, and resenting the other for something he never asked for and feels ambivalent about himself? "I'm not a very good friend, am I?" I asked aloud now.

"You're a very human friend, Scott. You're not sick, or bad. You're just human." We were silent a while but I didn't respond. Finally he rolled his chair back towards his desk and took out his calendar. "I'm going to make an appointment to see you on Friday. We hit some deep stuff today, some tender stuff, and I want to check in with you in two days and see how things are going. If you need to talk before then, I want you to call me, okay? You have my cell phone number - don't be afraid to use it. Especially if you start having flashbacks to some of those hustler jobs you were talking about, I want you to find someplace you feel safe in the mansion, someplace that reminds you of where and when you are, then call me. Don't try to be macho and tough it out. Flashbacks can be scary."

"I know," I said, sitting up again as I tried to pull myself together enough to get home. Bennett was looking at his calendar.

"How about 3pm on Friday?"

"Yeah, sure." He looked over, eyebrows up. "No, that's fine," I said to reassure him.

He wrote it in, then looked back at me. "Scott, did you drive here or take the subway?"

"Took the subway."

"Why don't you give somebody a call at the mansion to come get you? I'm not sure being crushed by a bunch of strangers on the subway would be a good idea for you right now."

I hadn't considered that, but he was right. Even the thought of all those people around me made me anxious. I nodded. "I'll call."

"You can sit right out there in my waiting room." I nodded again, then he rose and walked me to the door. "I'll see you Friday." And he went back into his office.

I called the mansion and Jean arrived forty minutes later, looking worried. Warren wasn't with her, and I was (selfishly) glad as she put her arm around my waist and led me back to the car. "You look awful," she said. "Do you want to talk about it?"

"No, not right now."

"Okay." She drove me home, and when we arrived, she walked me upstairs to my room, asking, "Do you want me to sit with you or anything?"

"No, I just want to be alone for a while." She tried to hold my eyes behind the visor, but our faces were a little too close. "I'll be okay," I said, stepping back into the room and shutting the door. Then I leaned up against it and sighed. How was I supposed to face her, now that I'd had my own illusions stripped away?

* * *

><p>And thus began my hell summer, as I thought of it later. I'd been through enormous change since arriving in Westchester - since leaving Nebraska, for that matter - but nothing matched those three months for intensity, especially June and early July. There were days I wasn't sure I'd be going to New Haven in the fall, wasn't sure I could manage it. For that matter, there were days I couldn't leave the mansion - could barely leave my room. Flying lessons were out, and I broke down regularly, which humiliated me, or I lost my temper over the simplest things. The veneer of stability that I'd achieved in the past year and a half was completely stripped away.<p>

I changed my image yet again, dressing all in black and no longer driving the Corvette in favor of a Harley I'd bought and souped up. I let my hair grow shaggy and two or three days might go by before I bothered to wash it. I greased it back, or developed a fetish for ballcaps to hide my face, in addition to the glasses, and sometimes wore bulky long sleeves even in ninety-degree weather. I ate little and smoked two packs a day. The one thing I didn't do was touch alcohol or drugs - not even the sleep aids Jon had offered to have prescribed for me. I think I knew that if I did, it'd be too easy to develop a habit. I let nicotine (and caffeine) be my drugs of choice, though there were three nights in late June when I let Jean give me Valium because I felt ready to fly apart without it.

Jean and Warren spent as much time with me as I'd allow - which wasn't as much as they'd have liked. And Jean admitted once that even when they were out alone together, they talked about me, which distressed me because it put me in mind of what my grandmother had said - that they both belonged to me, not to each other. I didn't want them to belong to me, not even Jean. Once again, only Xavier didn't seem concerned, though he did remark once that the clothes weren't particularly flattering - which was okay. I didn't want them to be. Another time, he asked if I planned to get a haircut before leaving for New Haven. I replied that I didn't know, maybe - though perversely, I appreciated his very parental remark, and I think he might have known as much. Sometimes we had conversations that were about very different things than what they seemed to be on the surface.

"You don't like being pretty, do you?" Jon asked one day when I showed up in his office looking particularly scruffy.

"You wouldn't either," I replied, "if that's the first thing you heard every time you showed up for a job. 'Oh, you're such a doll!" I lit a cigarette and collapsed in the chair. "You know what Marianna used to call me, as a joke? 'Killer Eyes.' Is that ironic, or what?"

"You had nice eyes?"

"Yeah. They were really blue. Everybody said they were my best feature."

"Not the cheekbones?"

I had to laugh. "No, not the cheekbones. That's what I've got left."

"You know what I think's your best feature?" he asked, and I shook my head, not sure if I wanted to hear, even while being very curious. I was like a cat - curiosity got me every time.

"Your smile," he told me now. "Your smile's your best feature. Don't see enough of it."

I gave him the tight version of it. "Cute, Jon."

"I'm not kidding. Your smile changes your whole face. It's very warm - pulls people right in."

I'd never thought of it like that, but when I got home that night, I found myself in front of the hallway mirror, smiling and trying to see in it what he saw. Jean came out of the den and caught me at it, making me jump in embarrassment. "What are you doing?" she asked.

"Uh, nothing." Then I blurted, "Do I have a nice smile?"

The question might have thrown her, but she didn't let it. Instead she smiled herself. "You have a beautiful smile, Scott. I think it's your best feature."

Startled by this echo, I asked, "Really?"

"Yeah, really. I love to see you smile; I've told you that before."

"But a smile's not really a feature. It's not a body part. Eyebrows are a feature. A nose is a feature. A smile is an _expression_."

She laughed at me. "God, you are so anal sometimes. I like to see you smile. Call it what you want."

So I smiled more for her after that. I didn't smile more generally, but I smiled more for her, and occasionally, I wore something that wasn't black. I liked it that her favorite thing about my appearance was an expression, not a body part.

The door to my past was now wide open, and if Bennett might have used Jean (and Warren) as a pry bar to get me to talk about hustling, our subsequent sessions had little to do with the now. Instead, he took me further and further into my past, showing how it had warped me so that the normal became abnormal and the perverse was my perception of reality. I'd always known I was wounded, but only now did I see just how deep the putrefaction ran. Almost nothing in my life was untainted, and I feared I'd never get better.

"It will always affect you," Bennett admitted. "But you'll heal, Scott. It just won't happen overnight."

"It's been almost three years already!"

"No, it's been only a month since you started taking out the past and really looking at it. Only a month."

"And I don't see the point of it! I was doing _fine_."

"You were coping. Now you're healing. There's a difference."

"How is _this_ healing?" I begged. "I can barely function! I'm falling down this goddamn _well_ and I can't even see the sky anymore! I cry all the _godfuckingdamn time_!" I was crying now. That had become a regular occurrence in sessions with Jon, but big boys weren't supposed to cry, and I felt unmanned.

"You've got years and years of neglect and abuse to cry about," he replied. "You had to cut those feelings off before to survive. But they didn't go anywhere. And if you don't let them out in tears, they'll come out in other ways that are a hell of a lot less healthy. Antidepressants might help stabilize you a little -"

"I don't want any goddamn drugs!" We'd been over that before.

"That's fine; that's perfectly fine. But it means you're going to go through the mood swings more profoundly. The good news is that you'll get through them faster. Probably. The bad news is that you'll feel everything more intensely - like the difference between quitting cold turkey or using a nicotine patch." He pointed to the cigarette in my hand.

I took a drag, almost in defiance. "If I ever quit, I'd quit cold turkey."

He snorted, more amused than annoyed. "Why does that not surprise me? Anybody ever tell you you're a control-freak, Summers?"

"Frequently."

Now he did laugh. "And that's how I know you're going to make it. It may not feel like it to you right now, but you're going to make it. I think if you put your mind to it, you could do whatever you wanted to do."

"Wait, don't say it! I'm 'special.'"

"You are." He was completely serious.

* * *

><p><strong>Notes:<strong> _Lux et veritas_is the motto of Yale, but it also means 'light and truth.' Once again, Lesani read over this and has offered her advice.


	16. Consonance

To me, the coolest thing about Yale wasn't the pseudo-gothic brick of Old Campus or its enormous stone wall. It wasn't the fact I was attending the third-oldest university in the country. It wasn't Harkness Tower, or the Yale Whale (Ingall's Rink), or even partaking in philosophical debates about Kant and Kierkegaard over hamburgers at the Yankee Doodle.

No, the coolest thing about Yale was the library, and specifically, the Beinecke Rare Books Room. Among other things, it has a complete Gutenberg Bible behind glass. There are only five of them in the U.S., and even today on the rare occasions I return to New Haven, I have to say "Hi" to the Gutenberg. It's a ritual. Jean and Warren think it's funny. Hank understands.

I arrived in New Haven as much at the last minute as a freshman was allowed to arrive, and that only after a pep talk from both Xavier and Jon Bennett. Warren accompanied me through the Sunday-afternoon circus called Freshman Bazaar on Beinecke Plaza - a dizzying array of extracurricular choices that my frosh self found more intimidating than exciting**:** "Excuse me, do you like to sing?" "Are you interested in politics?" "Do you play a sport?" "Just put your name and number down on this list right here . . ." I put up with it for all of half an hour before fleeing back to my dorm, which turned out to be the gothic-esque Durfee Hall on Old Campus right by Battell Chapel. Durfee had enormous double-rooms with _fireplaces_, for God's sake. My quad was on the top floor, giving me a two-foot wide ledge above Elm as an unofficial 'balcony,' which I climbed out on from time to time to smoke. (In my defense, I wasn't the only one to use these ledges; it seemed something of a rite of passage for the freshmen there, but I did it more often than most, or more than common sense would approve.)

Living in Durfee meant I'd be in Morse College later - and Morse's modernist architecture looked like peanut brittle with tumors, but that didn't trouble me much as I planned to move off campus with Warren the next year. I was still astonished at the sleight-of-hand he'd engaged in as a freshman in order to conceal his mutation. Freshmen _had_ to live in dorms, and there's only so much one can do to hide sixteen-foot wings. Thus, he'd kept an off-campus townhouse from the outset, where he'd gone for privacy, showers, and to get the damn wing rack off. He'd even slept there more often than not, though he'd gotten mail at his Yale post box. That had satisfied the administration, and money had plugged any private protests when his father contributed generously to upcoming Durfee renovations. There was talk that he had a girl - or a boy - in town, and his sophomore year, he'd thumbed his nose at the residential college system for which Yale was famous to move full-time into his townhouse. It had two bedrooms - evidence of his occasional cocky moments. From the beginning, he'd planned for me to occupy the other one, and later, we laughingly referred to ourselves as Xavier College. Warren even bought a big bronze X to hang on the door.

In any case, it's hard to escape the fact one's attending the Ivy League when _living_ in an ivy tower. And indeed, the stone brick outside my window sported clinging ivy fingers, which I found terribly funny - and terribly disconcerting, still wondering what I was doing there, and when (not if) the other shoe would drop.

But it didn't drop. Days passed at an uneventful if madcap pace as I learned my way around Old Campus and signed up for classes. At Bennett's suggestion, I took a lighter load of twelve credits, and my advisor didn't argue, let me choose a basic intro to biology, and The European Literary Tradition sequence to fulfill my freshman English requirement. I also signed up for Abnormal Psych and Religion, Ethics and Modern Moral Issues. I'd spent the past year in therapy unraveling my gut feelings about what had happened to me, and now wanted a more intellectual approach. But like any college psych student, I suffered from the tendency to diagnose myself with each new personality disorder we studied. This amused the professor and Bennett both. "Leave the diagnoses to me, Scott," Jon warned.

We'd decided I would drive back to New York to see him once every other week. I could probably have stood to see him more, but despite the fact New Haven was only a few hours away, it was still a few _hours_. Jon did give me the number of a colleague to call in case of an emergency, but that was all I'd accept or allow. If seeing Jon every other week was less therapy than I probably needed, it was also less stress than starting over with a new therapist would have been, on top of starting college. When I needed to talk between sessions, I had Jon's cell number, and sometimes, I used it.

Yet the most significant event of my first week occurred - of all places - in my suite's _shower_. Our quad shared one bathroom and I happen to sing when I shower. Yeah, it's a cliché; so what? I can't even recall what song I was belting out that morning four days after arriving, but all of a sudden, the shower curtain was yanked aside and a guy I'd never seen before (certainly not a suitemate) stuck his head in. It made me jump half out of my skin. "Son of a bitch! Who are you?"

"Ian Murphy," he said, grinning. "You've got a terrific voice!"

"Get the hell out of my shower!"

"You thought of doing _a capella_ rush?" he asked. "I'm in Mixed Company."

At the time, I had no idea what he was talking about, or that 'Mixed Company' was a group and not some college coed reference. Glaring over my shoulder (having turned my back), I yelled, "Would you fuck _off_!"

"No problem. Remember rush. See you around."

"I fucking hope not!" I called as the shower curtain was pulled to again and I was left in peace, still a little weak in the knees. I have peculiar reactions to physical privacy, and if nudity itself rarely bothers me, it has to be on _my_ terms. Having a complete stranger invade my shower had freaked me out.

I told Warren about it later over an early lunch in Commons, and his eyebrows hiked. "You got pounced on in the _shower_? Man, the singing groups do get aggressive, but recruiting in the shower is a new height - or new nadir." Taking a bite of sandwich, he asked around it, "You interested in auditioning, though?"

"I don't even know what these groups _are_." Of course I had - like every other freshman on campus - been asked several times at Freshmen Bazaar if I could sing, but unfamiliar with the _a capella_ , I'd lied and said, 'no.' It had seemed safer, at the time.

Now, Warren explained, "They're an old campus tradition. We'll go to the Woolsey Hall Jam on Sunday. It's worth attending anyway, and you can hear the groups for yourself and decide."

That's how I found myself in Woolsey Hall on a hot night in early September, listening to _a capella_ group after group strut their musical stuff, then at Dwight half a week later on a Friday evening. After the concert, Warren steered me out of the auditorium to the lobby where recruiters called out to freshmen (or sang to them). I was as put off by the intense attention as I was charmed, but when pretty girls from two different groups each approached with sign up sheets in hand, I found myself writing down my name. Then - bullet bitten - I signed three other lists, as well. "I can't believe I'm doing this," I said to Warren as we left, me juggling five audition folders.

"College is all about new experiences."

"Maybe. So why didn't you audition, back when?"

"You're kidding, right? You've heard me sing."

"You're not terrible."

"That's not saying much. I can carry a tune - but you can _sing_, Gamma Gaze. You can really sing. You've got this great voice. They're going to be fighting over you."

I was dubious, but also enticed, and we didn't say much else as we returned to Durfee, where I headed up to my dorm and Warren left for his own townhouse. When I talked to Jon Bennett later that same week, however, he was less encouraging. "Something like rush is an emotionally intense process, Scott. You're put on the block and looked at from all angles. It can feel like a judgment on your self-worth, right at a time when you're climbing back out of a hole."

"So you don't think I should do it?" (I was unexpectedly disappointed at his reservations.)

"That's not my choice to make. I just want to be sure _you_ want to do it - and don't put too much stock in it."

"I won't. I'm not really a 'joiner.' If I don't get picked, it won't be a disaster."

But he threw my own disclaimer back at me. "If you're not a joiner, then why are you trying to join?"

I had no ready answer to that. But I did keep my auditions, even if I didn't have anything prepared. I wound up singing "The Star Spangled Banner," which amused the listeners. After, I was walked through tests of my range, pitch, and blending ability. Yet beyond auditions (and callbacks), the rush experience was mostly social, and rivaled that of any fraternity or sorority in the U.S. New freshmen were courted in a semi-mysterious process that included concerts, bowling shirts, endless lunches, tap punch, and 'singing desserts.' It was the craziest thing I'd ever heard of, and there was no way in hell I'd normally have agreed to participate - especially with my ego so fragile that fall - but from that first bizarre shower encounter, I found myself seduced into the process.

I met with various group members over numerous meals, and answered - or sidestepped - a lot of questions. Some groups were nosey when it came to family or personal life, while others seemed more interested in _my_ interests - favorite music, subjects, books . . . Needless to say, I got on better with the latter, and discovered one soprano in Redhot and Blue who liked the same music I did, read the same books, and was in my 'Religion, Ethics and Modern Moral Issues' class - Colleen Wing. It was a bit like meeting a new Jean, and it didn't hurt that she'd been one of those two pretty girls who'd accosted me after the Dwight Hall jam, begging me to audition. Even if disinclined to flirt, I could still be flattered, and I had cheerful strangers seeking me out for something that didn't owe to Xavier, Warren, my father, or my pretty face. They wanted my _voice_. That was heady.

Not long after auditions, a dreary Friday afternoon found me sprawled on the Giamatti Bench, a granite semi-circular bit of modern art tucked away between High Street Gate and Lanman-Wright dorm. I liked it for its panoramic view of Old Campus lawn, without being in the way of gratuitous flying objects (e.g., frisbees). The hour was late, nearing sunset, which was why I had it to myself. Normally, one didn't get so lucky. I'd come out here for some quiet as I laboriously made my way through Paul Tillich's _The Shaking of the Foundations_:

_It strikes us when our disgust for our own being, our indifference, our weakness, our hostility, and our lack of direction and composure have become intolerable to us. It strikes us when, year after year, the longed for perfection of life does not appear ... when despair destroys all joy and courage. Sometimes at that moment a wave of light breaks into our darkness and it is as though a voice were saying, 'You are accepted.' If that happens to us, we experience grace._

Hey, Summers!"

The unexpected male voice made me start and pull the book down so I could see whoever was leaning over me - a fellow named Ike Gilardi from the all-male group, The Baker's Dozen. He had an Italian name, a black face, and an amazing baritone. Sitting up a little, I eyed him and replied, "What?"

"Just saw you out here and thought I'd come say 'hi.' You aren't eating, and this isn't a scheduled meeting, right?" He grinned, referring to the rush rules. "Whatcha reading?"

"Paul Tillich. It's for my religion and ethics class."

I offered the book and he took it, flipping through a few pages and comically crossing his eyes. "Man, is this in _English_?"

Grinning, I took the book back. "It's not light reading, but he wrote these sermons after World War II in response to the nuclear threat. It's kind of interesting, how he talks about the future. He says you either wind up sunk in this continual despair, or you find a reason to hope. But hope takes something to ignite it, some_ reason_ to hope, some experience of grace."

I could tell he had no idea why Tillich's contrast of despair and faith meant something poignant to me, and I found myself wishing for Hank. He just said, "Heavy stuff, Summers. Philosophy's not my bag. But I was wondering . . . you given much thought to what singing group you want to be in? Once you've auditioned and had a few lunches, it's smart to start putting your eggs in a couple baskets. The BDs are one of the older groups on campus. If you're interested in eventually making the Whiffenpoofs" - the oldest and the most prestigious group of all, limited to seniors - "we'd be a good choice. We got a long tradition, and could use a good, solid tenor like you."

That little speech might have verged into an 'indirect violation' of rush rules, but I wasn't going to report him. I was too astonished that I might be considered worth the risk. I'd never put much stock in my singing voice, but over the next couple weeks, overtures like that 'accidental' meeting with Gilardi made me slowly realize that I was among the especially courted.

Even so, I was far from sanguine on Tap Night - the eve on which new group members were selected, or 'tapped' - and I retired to Durfee at the proper time to wait, suffering from the very anxiety about which Bennett had been so concerned.. Selection involves more than raw singing talent. So much time is spent at rehearsals or on tours, that if one doesn't _fit in_, it's miserable, and fitting in wasn't something I'd ever been good at. Thus, the social aspects of rush had left me uncomfortable, particularly with the other all-male group I'd auditioned for, The Duke's Men. Too many of them were openly gay, and despite my friendship with Warren, I wasn't comfortable with gay men, no matter how I tried. I'm sure they felt it. Of my original five auditions, and despite my voice, only they didn't bother to call me back. It had forced me to come to terms with an aspect of myself that I didn't like. "I'm a homophobe," I told Jon at one of our biweekly sessions. "It's not religious, but yeah, by the definition of 'phobia,' I have a phobia about gay men."

"Do you have a phobia about lesbians?"

"No."

"Then you're not really a homophobe."

Annoyed that he'd dismissed so cavalierly something it had take me two weeks to face about myself, I snapped, "Well, what the fuck would _you_ call it?"

"Issues. You have issues, Scott, and for good reasons. You may never be entirely comfortable around gay men, but that doesn't mean you can't work at becoming more comfortable - just as you have with Warren."

"Warren's Warren."

"Yes. And if you'd taken more of a chance to get to know the guys in that group, you might've found a couple you liked well enough to stop thinking of them as 'gay' and start thinking of them by their names - just like you do with Warren. We're individuals, not labels. You're Scott, not an ex-hustler."

Stung a bit, but also challenged, I filed that away to ponder later. But I still wasn't entirely convinced.

Tonight, however, was the eve of reckoning, and as the various groups' runners stormed through High Street Gate onto Old Campus, I listened to the noise in the quadrangle below as each raced to be first to the dorms of their plum rushees. And I wondered (again) about the wisdom of bothering with this process. My suitemates - none of whom were rushing - went about their homework with studied indifference, though Warren had come over for moral support. "You know," my roommate Don said without turning to look up from his spot on the common-room sofa, "it's not a disaster if you don't get tapped. The singing groups are kinda cultish, actually."

"Sour grapes," Warren shot back, also without looking up from his economics text. He'd been into this whole process even more than I was. Vicarious participation, perhaps. He might have been jealous of my voice but - as always - opted for the less predictable response, supporting me through the entire ordeal, enthused by the various groups' enthusiasm over me. That was another reason I'd stuck it out - Warren was proud of my talent and I didn't want to let him down.

In any case, I ignored them both, attempting to read but not getting far. Every now and then, a burst of laughter came from outside our open window, or the thunder of feet sounded somewhere in the building. Twice, I thought they were coming to my floor, but they stopped short. It hadn't been that long - fifteen, maybe twenty minutes - yet my nerves were frayed at the end of a long day of anticipation. Right now, I just wanted it to be over.

Then came another set of pounding feet and the burst of an opening stairwell door, and Don muttered, "Sound like goddamn elephants." I couldn't resist looking up, stomach clenching, and Warren was on his feet even as a mad pounding rattled the suite door. Startled, I fumbled my psych textbook and it crashed to the floor. "Coming!" Behind me, Don snorted.

Warren stood back to let me answer the knock and I swung the door wide even as four voices in the hall beyond chorused "Tap!" My shoulder was roughly slapped (definitely not a 'tap'), then I was pushed back inside the common room as members of Redhot and Blue invaded, thrusting a big silver urn into my hands and standing about clapping.

"You want me?" Surprise made me stupid.

"Yes!" they chorused, "Drink!"

"Wow," I replied, articulation failing in the face of their enthusiasm. "I mean, um, wow. I got tapped." Warren was laughing, and I laughed, too, because I sounded utterly ridiculous. It won me a hug from Colleen Wing, and the anxiety of just a few minutes ago had been replaced by such a euphoria that my usual aversion to touch was dulled.

"Drink!" they ordered again. I was still gripping the urn.

So I drank Tap punch. And that was how I wound up singing tenor for two years in Redhot and Blue.

In fact, I got tapped again twice that night, but there wasn't much question as to which group I'd join, and it wasn't entirely about Colleen Wing's pretty dark eyes or shared interests. In fact, it wasn't about her at all; I'd needed to be on someone's short list - wanted _specifically_, not settled for. I'd have adopted whichever group had reached me first. And if I would, in the end, spend only two of my four years at Yale involved in _a capella_ before the time commitment drove me to defect and begin my interest in journalism with _The Yale Herald_, being part of Redhot was formative for me. I learned how to function in a group where my past remained unknown - and didn't matter. Some friendships are all about self-revelation, while others are about being taken at face value, unencumbered by previous baggage. Colleen became my best buddy at Yale, second only to Warren, and we remained cross-gender Siamese twins until she graduated three years later. I owe my affinity for good nikujaga and wasabi horseradish to Colleen.

The truth about my mutation came out rather quickly - probably because (to me) it wasn't the Big Secret. After some initial dubiousness, the group took it in stride. These were the days before 'mutant hysteria,' and another group member, Henry Ash, eventually became a U.S. Congressman - a conservative Republican, in fact - but when Mutant Registration went before the House in 2005, he stuck out his neck and his chances at re-election because he'd been my friend. He wasn't afraid of mutants, and his nonchalance carried four more representatives with him. These were the kinds of friends I made in those two years, and if they weren't Warren or Jean, or even Hank, they still ranked high in my affection. Bennett told me it was important to have more friends than just the handful I'd found at Xavier's, and if trust was never an easy thing for me, I did learn to open up a bit more.

So I had class and rehearsals, while Warren had his own circles (and Jean), with the end result that I saw less of him that fall - even though I was living in New Haven - than I'd seen in Westchester. That wasn't what he'd hoped for, and when he found out that my Christmas vacation was going to be cut short because of Winter Tour, he was moody for days. Given all the time I had to invest in rehearsals, his enthusiasm for my joining a singing group had waned rapidly, and he went from proud to resentful. No doubt, it didn't help that Jean was in her second year of med school and seemed to have very little time for him, either.

But she had time for me. We wrote a lot of email, and talked by phone, and when she flunked an exam for the first time, I was the one she called, in tears. "I missed four questions!"

"And you flunked?" I was astonished.

"Scott, I just _killed_ four people!"

"Oh." Put that way, it made more sense. "Did you call War?"

"No, no." Her voice was rushed, and embarrassed. "I . . . I don't want him to know. That I failed, I mean. I can tell you."

I started to ask why, but I knew why. With Warren, she felt compelled to try too hard; she could never be real with him. But after our long-ago fight in the den, Jean and I had gotten past that. Jean could bring her failures to me and not fear judgment. In that alone, I should have foreseen the end of Jean and Warren.

"So you flunked a test," I told her now. "It's not the end of your medical career. Suck it up and go back in swinging, 'kay?" It sounded less sympathetic than I meant it, but that's what she needed from me sometimes, why she called me. I didn't coddle her. We talked a minute more, than I hung up and went back into group rehearsal. "Sorry," I told them. "Minor crisis. All better now." And I picked up with the other tenors.

After rehearsal, Colleen pulled me aside to ask, "What happened? Anything big?"

"Jean flunked an exam. First time. It required a pep talk."

"And she called you instead of Warren . . . why exactly?" Colleen knew Warren, and also knew who Jean was by default.

I wasn't sure how much of Jean's privacies it was my place to reveal, but I said, "We're just friends. She's not trying to impress me, so she can tell me." And it was true. Even if I should have seen that her insecurity with Warren didn't bode well for their future - and whatever my grandmother had seen, or thought she'd seen - Jean's attachment to me was still purely platonic. And if mine to her had more layers of complication, it was largely platonic as well. We loved each other, but we weren't yet in love.

Nonetheless, Colleen's lips pursed into a moue of mild disbelief. "Scott, you spend a hell of a lot of time talking to your best friend's girl."

And her phrasing stopped me cold. We'd been walking to Mory's - a local hangout for the singing groups - and now I halted dead outside High Street Gate. She stopped, too, hands on hips, head tilted. Her dark hair was up under a stocking cap, and the day was unusually cold for early November, more like January. The gray clouds overhead promised snow, making the pseudo-gothic wall around Old Campus seem even drearier.

"She's not just my best friend's girl, Col. She's -" I didn't want to say, 'She _is_ my best friend' and hurt Colleen's feelings. "The three of us have been really close for a long time. I'm Jean's friend as much as I'm Warren's friend. There's not . . . there's no hierarchy that way. We're all equally close; they just happen to be dating, too."

She still appeared skeptical. "And you don't feel on the outside of that?"

"No," I lied, as I didn't want to discuss with Colleen the full complexities of our triangle. "I don't feel attracted to Jean romantically, if that's what you think."

"What about Warren?"

That question caught me entirely off guard and my jaw dropped. "What? No way - you thought -? No way, Colleen."

"The gentleman doth protest too much, methinks."

And I was protesting, if not for the reasons she assumed. Frustrated, I shook my head almost violently. "I'm not interested in Warren - not that way. I'm not gay. I'm not interested in Jean, either."

"But you're straight?"

"Yeah."

"Really?"

"Yes, really!"

Shaking her head, she spun on a heel and headed off, arms folded against the cold, or perhaps against the intricacies of my relationship with Warren and Jean. As much as I enjoyed her company, she could never be either of them, and I think she knew it, and resented it. It's never an easy thing to feel closer to someone than he feels to you, and for the rest of the evening, I was especially kind to her, but she sensed that was pity-driven, and grew mildly vicious on Yuengling Cream Ale. Much later, I escorted her back to her college. She stumbled a bit from too much beer that she was too young to have bought. Before going inside, she paused to look up at me. "You know, Summers, I can't figure you out sometimes. You say you're not gay, and you're not interested in pretty boys - and okay, you don't seem to respond, even when they chase you. But you're not interested in pretty _girls_, either. You say you're straight, but I wonder if you're _anything_."

Saying that, she yanked the door open and stalked inside, leaving me standing in the dark, damp cold of a November night. For the first time, it hit me that Colleen might have sought more from our friendship than a mere discussion of books and ethics and music.

* * *

><p>Warren seemed amused by my belated recognition. "You only now figured that out?" We were eating ham-and-pineapple pizza at Warren's apartment, watching <em>Mission Impossible<em>, which had just come out on video. This was War's idea of a good evening. Action-film entertainment with eye-candy (although for Warren, 'eye-candy' meant Tom Cruise as much as Emmanuelle Béart), no wing harness, cheap pizza, cold beer, and no pressure to be anything but a twenty-one-year-old college student.

"Fuck you," I replied now, pleasantly. "Why would I assume she was interested in me romantically?"

"Um, maybe because she spends a godawful amount of time with you?"

"So does Jean - well, did back home - and we're just friends."

Warren didn't reply to that and I turned my head to look at him; his expression was . . . odd, and his wings flinched unconsciously. I was reminded all over again of the previous year and my questions about Jean and Warren and just what they felt for each other, and for me. "What is it?" I asked now.

But he shook his head and rolled to his feet, wings lifting to avoid overbalancing or knocking our beer bottles into my lap. "What's what?"

"Something's bugging you." In truth, something had been bugging him all evening.

"Nothing's bugging me," he said now. "I just need to take a piss, is all." Warren was generally adept at nonchalance, but I knew him too well. There _was _something wrong, and the real question was whether or not I wanted to know what it was. I didn't think I did, so I let him go hit the john.

Yet sitting there with the film on pause, staring at the screen and listening to the snap of the fire behind its grate, I changed my mind. I'd come over this evening because we'd had no chance for two weeks to spend time together outside occasional meals, and Warren had been my first real friend. I wasn't about to lose him because I suddenly had a social life, or because I feared whatever had crawled under his skin tonight.

Shutting off the tape, I rose to wait outside the bathroom door, arms crossed, eyes on my feet, until he emerged. I startled him, and his wings snapped out a little. "What's bugging you?" I demanded bluntly.

"Nothing -"

"Bullshit."

"Scott, I don't think you want -"

"Bull_shit_. I do want to know."

"Jean and I broke up."

I just blinked. "You did? What happened?"

"It's complicated." He moved past me, over to the bar. I followed, watching him get another beer.

"So it's complicated. What happened?'"

Stopping, he set down the bottle-opener, then just leaned into the counter with both hands. Overhead track-lighting brought out the spotless-but-for-pizza-crumbs nature of the black marble counter and the wide variety of drink glasses hanging from racks above. He had a maid to keep it spotless, of course. "I told you, you don't want to know."

My stomach twisted and I had a pretty good idea of what he didn't think I wanted to know. "You don't want to tell me because it's about me, isn't it?"

"Yes, it's about you - and it's not. It's really about us. You're just . . . stuck in the middle. Literally." He started laughing, but not with humor.

"It's the same old thing, isn't it?" I paced, upset, frustrated and confused. "Was it ever really Jean you wanted?" The question sounded harsh but my voice wasn't.

"I convinced myself it was Jean. I'm sorry - I know how you feel about . . . the whole thing, but I had to stop kidding myself." Standing up straight and pulling his wings in tightly against his back, he said, "I did the breaking up, though I think we both knew it was coming, and it was mutual. We talked for a while, cried for a while. I guess it's a good sign when you can cry with your ex-girlfriend."

"So you're still speaking?"

His smile was wry and he took a long swig of beer. "More now than before we broke up. We got confused about what we were feeling for each other, that's all. We tried to make friendship into something else. In a way, I'm relieved to have my friend back. Things may be awkward for a bit, but we'll get over it. At least we didn't sleep together." His eyebrows hopped. "That was pretty much the Big Clue."

I felt my whole body tense. This was more than I wanted to know, but I wasn't going to stop him. Now that the truth was out, he seemed to need to discuss it, so I made myself walk over and take a seat on one of the stools at the wet bar.

"I took my time even trying, at first," he said. "Jean's never -" Abruptly he shut his mouth then shook his head. "Oh, hell - she's never had sex, Scott. That's probably her business, but just don't tell her I told you, okay?"

I nodded. The news didn't surprise me.

"Anyway, this summer was . . . really intense. For you and for us. We danced around the sex thing, got a little hot and heavy, but never went further than shirts off. Then this fall, when I'd go see her, she started putting me off and I let her because, well, I'd stopped being interested. But you ought to _want_ to make love to your girlfriend. That's when I realized the 'it' wasn't there and wasn't ever going to be there. And she feels the same way about me."

Elbows on the bar top, I'd listened to all this with reluctant curiosity, and now said, "I don't get why she'd put you off. She's been in love with you almost from the start."

He took another long swig of beer. "Maybe she had a crush on me once, but since we've become real friends - no. This _is_ a mutual thing, Scott. We're not in love with each other; we just thought we were."

I opened my mouth to reply, then shut it. They weren't in love with each other. Warren was in love with me. Still. And Jean?

Not ready to face those questions, I climbed down off the stool and went back to my spot in front of the TV near the fireplace. Some news show was playing now that the VCR had switched off and I stared at it, trying to clear my head. I sat for some minutes, but Warren didn't come join me, and he wasn't still at the bar. Rising, I went to look for him, found him in his bedroom with one wide window of his glass wall open to the night air, his wings half-spread. He didn't turn at my footstep. "War?"

"I think I'm going flying, Scott. You can finish watching the movie, if you want. I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable."

"You didn't."

"Don't lie."

"Okay, you did, but it doesn't matter."

"Yes, it does matter. It'll always fucking _matter_."

And something strange happened - for the first time, I wasn't upset for myself. I was upset at how much he was hurting, and how I was the cause, even if it wasn't my fault. I felt larger, as if my chest had expanded. I could face this. Walking over, I stood so I could see his profile. It was stark, tense, and I ran a hand down the top of his wing. He whispered, "Scott -"

"Let me."

So he let me massage his wings. It soothed him and I liked doing it - a bit like petting a cat, really. I was okay with this; it sure as hell wasn't anything I'd ever performed for anyone else and his feathers were amazingly soft. Using his body's natural secretions at the wing root, I oiled the feathers with my bare hands. His wings were jointed like a bat's, which allowed them to be folded up in his wing rack without breaking the bones, and I suppose it made sense that if a human were to grow wings, they'd be mammal-like rather than bird-like, even if they had feathers. His head was back as he let himself be vulnerable to me. After a while, I turned him around and we faced each other. "I wish I could," I told him.

"I know."

"I'm sorry."

"Why?" His smile was thin and a bit watery, but real. "Part of what I've always loved about you is that you have very little pretense. I won't lie and say it doesn't hurt, but I'd rather have you honest. I guess I just figured I'd get over you. Didn't happen." He laughed, and there was genuine humor in it. "And I think I'm glad it didn't."

"War, you'll find -"

"- someone else? Probably. I'm not that much of a hopeless romantic. I don't believe there's just one person for us. I thought Jean might _be_ that someone else, but it was just another way of getting you by proxy. Still, I'm sure I'll find somebody someday."

Two years ago, I might have just accepted all that at face value. Now, I said, "Who are you trying to convince - me, or you?"

For a moment his good nature snapped, and I saw honest anger behind the gray-green eyes. "Don't," he warned.

"Why not?" I was strong enough to do this. A year ago - no. But now, I was strong enough - and loved him enough - to push. "You're way too sweetly reasonable about this."

"What do you want from me, then?"

"The truth. You say you value me because I tell you the truth, so give me the same. Just say it. You want me. You can't have me, not that way. And it pisses you off."

"You think it's so simple, don't you?" And there was an edge of blue-blood hauteur to that.

"It is, at one level. That's what I want you to admit." I moved in closer, so we were almost face to face, even though it made me look up through my glasses. "You want to be this unpretentious, kindhearted, poor little rich boy, so that's what you do your damn best to seem. But that's not the whole story. You're still a Worthington, still used to getting your way, and when you can't, it really, really pisses you off."

"Why are you doing this?" he hissed back, torn between hurt and fury. "I don't want to be like that! I don't want to be selfish like that!"

And I was struck powerfully by an echo of something I'd said last spring to Jon - that I didn't want to be so selfish I couldn't be happy for my friends. And I remembered Jon's reply, too. So now, gripping Warren's face between my hands, I said, "It's okay to be selfish sometimes - it's honest. I had to learn that, and so do you. It's okay to be angry, pissed off, and Christ, I -" I stopped. I'd meant to say, 'I wish I could give you what you want' - but did I? A part of me did, but another part was terrified of it. If I could give him what he wanted, if _I _could want it, too, wouldn't that mean I'd deserved everything that had happened to me on the street? Wouldn't it mean I'd asked for it all along? If I _wanted_ that, I really was a whore, wasn't I?

Abruptly, I let his face go and took two steps back, staring like the proverbial deer in the headlights. "Scott -?" he asked.

I shook my head. "Nothing. Sorry. I just . . . it's okay if you're selfish sometimes." Swallowing, I turned away. "Maybe if I wasn't so fucked up, I could return the feelings - yours, Colleen's. But Colleen was right. I'm not gay, I'm not straight, I'm not _anything_ except broken."

"You're not broken."

"Oh, come on, War" - I spoke with heat - "I may not be as bad as I was, but I'm still screwed up and always will be. I'm just learning to be marginally functional in my screwed-up-ness."

I could tell he didn't know how to reply to that, so I went back out to the TV, where I finished watching the movie. Warren must have gone flying after all. When the movie was over, I let myself out, and later, back in my quad's sitting room, I called Jean. "Warren told me," I said as soon as she answered. "About the break-up - he told me."

She didn't answer for almost a minute, then said, "We're not mad at each other."

"I know."

"It didn't have anything to do with you."

"Yes, it did. He told me that, too. We talked about what he feels, and it's okay. I'm not freaked out by it like I used to be."

More silence. "Oh. Okay. That's good."

"How are you?"

"Fine. It really was mutual, Scott. He just brought it up first. I'm fine."

"Okay."

We spoke a little longer, then she hung up - yet that conversation had been no easier than the one with Warren, and suddenly, my short time home for the holidays seemed like a good thing. Neither would be in Westchester for Thanksgiving, and Jean would spend all of Christmas in Annandale-on-Hudson. Warren, as it turned out, stayed on Long Island with his parents for the first time in three years. It seemed that our delicate trio of voices had fallen into dis-chord.

* * *

><p>That year's winter tour was in Chicago - not my first choice of place to spend the week after Christmas, given the temperatures, but it did mean I got to see Hank again for the first time in almost a year. Tour over, I headed up to Deerfield to stay with his family for a couple of days before flying back directly to New Haven. Deerfield, Illinois was really just a suburb of Chicago, and he'd grown up on a small organic farm outside the town in a suburb of the suburb, called Durfee. Among other things, they sold Christmas trees, so with the season just over, the family was busy securing the farm for the rest of the winter. They had three enthusiastic collies, a smokehouse for curing meats, a canning shop - shut down now - and a workshop where Hank's mother made candles and soap to sell in the quaint and rustic shop adjoining the house. In order to compete with the big farming corps, the McCoys had resorted to opening a small business that catered to yuppies and others who could pay $3 for a bar of special soap or buy scented candles, homemade pumpkin-butter, cherry cider, and organic vegetables. Edna McCoy was a former hippie who'd finally found her niche, a little wacky maybe with her crinkle-cloth skirts and crystal jewelry, but I'd liked her from the first time I'd met her when she'd visited Westchester a couple years back. She made good pumpkin-butter, too, and was fierce in her convictions. Among the things one could find in the little shop off Highway 22 were bumper stickers that read, "Mutants are people, too."<p>

"What is this?" I asked her, holding it up and laughing. It was snowing outside the shop windows and she had a fire going in the old stove. Since it was a Saturday, Hank was home, but he and his father were working on the motor for one of the tractors; it probably had a specific name, but I was clueless when it came to farming equipment.

Now, she grinned at me. "We had them made up to sell."

Shaking my head, I put the sticker ('mutant' in rainbow lettering) back down and returned to unpacking a box of newly made candles. They smelled nice, like cinnamon and apples. "I was glad to get to hear your singing group the other night," she said to me. "I love old show tunes. Will you sing if Hank plays later tonight?"

I turned to look at her. "Me?"

"Well, I don't see anyone else in the shop, do you?" She was laughing at me, but in that way she had that made a body smile back. She was such a strange mix of '50s Illinois farm-girl turned '60s radical turned '70s Deadhead turned '90s Wiccan, and delightful for that. She never made me feel judged, and seemed to think that everyone ought to have a few eccentricities. "It keeps a person interesting," she'd said once with a firm nod of her head, and I began to understand how Hank could be a fan of Shakespeare and Star Wars, a former football player and a science geek. To his parents, those weren't contradictions. Instead of asking, "Why?" Edna was the kind of mother who asked, "Why not?" So later that evening after the sun went down, Hank played the piano in the family room and I sang. Then the McCoys went to bed and I went to smoke on the front porch. Hank came out, too, wrapped in a down jacket and cradling a mug of steaming cider. With Chicago on the southern horizon, I couldn't see as many stars as I might have liked, but Hank pointed out constellations. Finally, he sat down in one of the rocking chairs there. "I heard about Jean and Warren," he said.

I took a drag from my cigarette and didn't reply for a while. Finally, I said, "It's my fault," as I crushed out the burning end under my heel and put the butt in my pocket to throw away later. Edna didn't want her lawn littered.

He snorted. "How do you figure that?"

"Warren's still in love with me. He used Jean as a proxy. They say they're not mad at me, but . . ." I shrugged. "Neither of them came to Westchester for Thanksgiving or Christmas." And if I'd been relieved by that, another part of me had been disappointed, and worried.

"Did it occur to you they might be trying to avoid _each other_?"

"I'm sure they are. But I think they're trying to avoid each other around _me_, in particular." I shook my head and lit a second cigarette. "I didn't mean to break them up."

"You didn't."

"Yes, I did. Even if just indirectly." I inhaled smoke and held it a moment, then blew out strongly. "Hank, do you think a person can be gay and not know it?"

Turning his head, he peered at me in the dark. "What makes you think you're gay?" He didn't even bother with third person, and the question was more curious than dismissive.

"I don't know if I am. But, I mean - think about it. First, I was a hustler, then Warren fell for me, and at Yale, about half the members in one of the singing groups I tried out for were gay, and if they didn't do a callback for me, they were _really_ interested in me at first. I figure I must be sending out some kind of . . . signal, or something. So I wondered if maybe I am gay, and I just don't know it."

Hank continued to peer, then abruptly shook his head, but didn't answer immediately, as if trying to figure out how to reply. Finally, he asked, "Would it bother you, if you were?"

"Yes." I shifted, unhappy with that answer but compelled to be honest. "And I wonder if maybe I don't think I'm gay because I don't want to be, you know? Gay guys make me uncomfortable. Except War, but he's bi-, and I've read that guys who're really uncomfortable around gay men are suppressing their own homosexuality."

Hank frowned; I could see it by the light from one of the shop windows - his mother kept a lamp on all night to deter thieves. "I'm probably not the best person to ask about this, Scott, but I'd say your logic doesn't follow. The mere fact you were a hustler, or that Warren has a crush on you - or that a singing group with a number of gay members sought your participation - are not 'signs' that you're gay. It's simply evidence that you're an extraordinarily attractive young man - the kind who makes people want to follow you home to see if you're real." He chuckled at his own joke, but I didn't.

"The problem is that society has socialized us into regarding female attention to men as the norm and thus, not worthy of comment. Thus, you notice when _men_ pay attention to you - no doubt in part due to your former profession - but you don't notice when women's heads turn . . . and they do turn, Scott."

I thought about Colleen, and the attention of other girls in the singing groups, and couldn't argue. I shrugged instead.

"As for your discomfort with gay men, yes, it's true that hostility to gays can stem from suppressed homoerotic tendencies in the self, but tagging that as the sole reason for such discomfort is rather simplistic psychology. It seems to me that you have some very good reasons for mixed feelings about gay men, given your previous experiences, but the fact you not only accept Warren but consider him a close friend suggests those feelings aren't unconquerable or absolute.

"Perhaps you need to ask yourself more probing questions rather than rely on surface connections. For instance, what, specifically, about gay men bothers you? Do the same things bother you about gay women? What about straight women, or - ?"

"It's sex," I interrupted. "It's the whole sex thing. They want to have sex with me. With War, I can accept it because I know there's a lot more to it than that for him. But it's still the sex. I don't want people looking at me and thinking of me as their toy, or fantasizing about me."

"Even if they're women?"

"Women aren't . . . women don't think about it the same. I mean, I'm not a woman, but still - it's not women who pick up girls and boys on the street. It's men. And I don't want to be what they think of when -" I cut off, unable to actually complete the sentence. I was jiggling my knee almost uncontrollably, and finished my second cigarette only to light a third.

"You don't want to be a masturbation fantasy," Hank finished for me.

"Yeah. I'm not their whore. I'm not their toy."

Hank leaned forward to set down the empty mug of cider, then clasped his hands. I wondered why it was Hank I came to, to discuss sex. Perhaps it was simply because he wasn't interested in me, nor would he crack crass jokes. "First, while there are distinct differences in both the physiology and psychology of men and women, women can and do fantasize, Scott. Second, fantasizing is a normal human behavior, and while I understand that you wouldn't want to be the subject of fantasies, given what you've suffered, perhaps you could think of them as a compliment, and remember that such fantasies aren't _you_? No one is forcing you to do anything you don't want to do."

I was reminded abruptly of what Jon Bennett had said to me about my own fantasies involving Jean.

"Last, others' attraction to you isn't indicative of your _own_ desires. You're not merely a reflection, Scott. The best way to determine your sexual preference is to think about _your_ feelings. Are you aroused by women, or men, or both?" My face had gone white, and he added quickly, "That's a rhetorical question. I'm not asking you to tell me."

Then he stood and looked down at me. "Continue to ask yourself questions, but be sure the answers to those questions follow logically. And perhaps the best way to deal with your anxiety about gay men is to remember that the same actions or reactions can stem from a variety of motivations. Both Warren and an unknown man on the street may desire you, but the reason for that desire - or at least the other emotions that might be tied up with it - are not the same." Walking over, he opened the shop door. "'Night, Scott." And he left me out there, brooding.

* * *

><p>By spring semester, the shine of the new had worn off college, leaving me with both a demanding class load and what felt like too many rehearsals for Redhot's Spring Tour. Tempers ran high, and my moody nature didn't make me easy to interpret. There's always a break-in period once the honeymoon is over, and that spring was my breaking-in. I had to learn to <em>get along<em> with people without stalking off - which had been my method of handling disagreement in the past.

Late one February afternoon, there was yet another blow up between myself and the rest of the group. "Smile when you sing, Scott, and move around. For pete's sake, you're not a mannequin."

I forever disappointed the rest by my stage presence - probably because I didn't have any. I was, quite frankly, "wooden." Now, frustrated and angry, I shouted back, "You knew what you were getting when you goddamn tapped me! I'm a _singer_, not an actor! Why the hell did you pick me if you didn't want me?" And I stalked out of rehearsal.

Predictably, Colleen showed up at my door about an hour later, arms crossed, head cocked, and lips pursed in annoyance. It hadn't taken us long to revert to a comfortable (if platonic) friendship after our early November spat. "Well, that was very _high school_," she said.

Slouching against the doorjamb, I lit a cigarette. "Screw you."

Reaching out, she grabbed the cigarette from my mouth and dropped it on the hall floor, grinding it out beneath her heel. "Those things are terrible for your voice, and the insouciance routine gets old. You say you're not an actor, but you give Marlon Brando a run for his money with the brooding rebel thing."

I glared back and didn't reply.

"What's up with you lately?"

"Nothing."

"Oh, cut it out!" And she shoved her way into my quad sitting room, even if I hadn't invited her. "You take every suggestion personally of late, like it's a criticism."

"Well, _criticism_ seems to be all I hear anymore. Why the fuck did you guys tap me?"

She threw up her hands and plopped down on the couch. "Because you were the best tenor to audition, hands-down! And we're about to lose our Pitch, too. She graduates in May. Your name has already come up as a possible new Pitch for next year. You're always on."

They were considering me for _Pitch_? That dropped my jaw. And she really wasn't supposed to tell me about tap choices, but she must have sensed that I needed some real encouragement.

"When you auditioned, everyone realized you probably weren't going to be a front-man soloist. But sometimes what a group really needs is a solid center - and that's what you are, even if you don't read music very well. Your timing is great, your pitch is almost perfect, and the other singers _lean_ on you, Scott. When we start shaking apart, you, Alfie and Donna are the voices the rest of the group falls back on to center us. You're our engines. _That's_ why you were picked. If a group doesn't have reliable, solid singers like that, it disintegrates. Nobody had any illusions that you were especially charismatic, but you are dependable. We just want you to remember to smile sometimes, like you're actually enjoying yourself instead of finding it all a drag."

"It's not a drag," I said, but my mind was back on the rest of what she'd confessed. They depended on me? But I knew that was true, when I wasn't feeling so defensive. For every time I'd been told, '_Smile_, will you?' I'd also heard someone else told, 'Listen to Scott. Get the pitch from Scott.'

Now, I crossed to sit down next to her on the couch, saying, "When I sing, I like hearing how it all fits together. It's about the music. All the grinning and bouncing around kinda . . . detracts. Or distracts, maybe."

Unexpectedly, she nodded. "I understand. But just . . . try to look like you're having fun sometimes, okay?" Then she reached across to pull the pack of Camels out of my breast pocket and shake them under my nose. "And would you cut back on these? You really are going to wreck your wind and voice, which would be a crying shame. Besides, it's just gross."

I took the pack out of her hand and looked at it. She was the first person to really say anything to me about the smoking in a while, but I knew it bothered people - which was one reason I went out on the ledge to do it, as often as not. Even Warren had started wrinkling his nose at me, and I could no longer claim probable early death as an excuse. It was just a nasty habit, but last summer, I'd been feeling pretty nasty. Now . . .

Getting up, I walked over to toss the half-full pack of cigarettes in the trash by my desk and dig in the bottom of drawer, pulling out my old pipes, stored in oilcloth. Unwrapping them, I stuck one (unlit) between my teeth and grinned at her around it. "Better?"

She broke up laughing. "You look like my dad!"

Going off a two-pack-a-day habit was no cakewalk, but I was nothing if not stubborn, and only cutting back, not quitting. Thus, I wasn't completely unbearable to be around in the countdown days to Spring Tour. Tour itself was a splendid week of cavorting in sunny Atlanta. I ate a lot of pecan pie and was surprised to find myself okay staying with host families this time, instead of dreading it. I still wasn't the life of the party, but the tour manager was good at pairing me with somebody who was, so I got to be the quiet one, and pulled out my old air force manners, dusting them off. One of the women hosting us told me she hadn't been 'ma'am'ed so much since she'd taught at a private Catholic school. Tim Roth, paired with me that night, said later, "You're full of surprises, Summers - a regular boy scout, when you want to be." I didn't reply because the idea of anyone calling _me_ a 'boy scout' was too ludicrous for a coherent response.

Returning to Yale after the Spring Break Tour, I found a surprise waiting for me. Jean Grey had come to New Haven for a visit.

Ironically, she was staying with Warren, and both of them showed up at my dorm less than an hour after I'd gotten back while I was unpacking in preparation for waging war on dirty laundry. "Hey, Summers!" my roommate Don called. "Company!" And I wandered out, all unsuspecting, only to be ambushed by an enthusiastic Jean in her down jacket and rainbow scarf and mittens. Her throttling hug won laughter and whistles from both Don and one of my other suitemates, Sanjay. "_Now_ we know why he checks his email three times a day!" Sanjay said.

I blushed, branded guilty by red cheeks and ears, even as I shot them both a bird and let Jean yank me out the door after Warren. "What're you doing here on a _Wednesday_?" I demanded, standing in socked feet on winter-cold tile and dressed in my last pair of (semi-)clean jeans. I wore the old blue pullover Mariana had given me so long ago; it barely fit me now, but I clung to it for nostalgia.

"It's spring break for me," she replied. "And I have _news_. We're going to Greece!"

Taken completely by surprise, I gaped. "What? _When? _Who?"

"All four of us, in May, after the semester's over. We'll get a whole month! The professor told my parents it'd be 'educational,' and they agreed, as long as you, Warren and Hank would be along." And she presented me with a Berlitz Greek phrase book. Then they let me go back in to put on shoes, and a jacket and tie, before abducting me to Mory's for Welsh rarebit and catching up at wooden tables with rickety bistro chairs - my laundry postponed for a few hours. It was awkward at first, but both of them persisted in such relentless cheerfulness that I forgot about it quickly and we ended up doing the Monkees' Walk arm-in-arm down York Street, laughing our heads off.

* * *

><p><strong>Notes: <strong>The title and summary on this one owe to Libby Edwards, as does musical information. Both Yale and specific singing group info, however, owes to Eve Tushnet and her friend Mike ('peanut brittle with tumors' is Eve's own description of her college); the Red Hot and Blue singing group really does exist, but they obviously never had Scott Summers as a member. _The Shaking of the Foundations_ are a collection of sermons given by Paul Tillich following Hiroshima, and published in 1948. Tillich's philosophical theology is tough going, even at the sermon level, but worth the effort. Warren's wing anatomy is what happens when you throw together an artist, a medical doctor, and a bird expert at Dexcon - my thanks to Ashlan, Epona and J.B. McDragon - y'all rock. And yes, of course, if Misty Knight showed up, naturally Colleen Wing had to, as well. ;


	17. Climbing Mount Olympus 1: Lily Prince

"There she is - Mount Olympus."

The words were Hank's and he was leaning past Jean and me to point out the tiny airplane window to a peak arching slightly above the cloud line like a white-crowned isle in a gray-white sea. "She's not that high, compared to the Alps," he went on, "but she rises almost 10,000 feet only eight miles from the shore, so it looks impressive. No wonder the ancients thought gods lived on top. You can almost make out Zeus' Throne from here."

"Hank," Jean scolded, swatting at him. "There are no gods on the mountain, and no throne."

"Actually, there is - not gods, but the large rock formation on the northern peak is nicknamed 'Zeus' Throne.' It real name is Stefani; the southern peak is Mytikas."

She laughed at him. "Well, maybe you can take a picture of me sitting on Zeus' Throne."

"Maybe I will."

We were going to climb the mountain. (We and a lot of other tourists, no doubt.) It was only one of several plans for our four-week tour of Greece, but it was the excursion whose prospect excited Jean the most. "My parents would never have let me do this." As a teen, she'd been wrapped in felt and protected like a Nineteenth Century lady, deemed too emotionally fragile for high school and too physically fragile for hard exercise. So Warren was looking forward to sailing the Aegean, Hank to the history of Athens, me to walking battlefields, and Jean to climbing a mountain. I just hoped she did have the stamina for it, and me, too.

This was my personal odyssey. I'd gone from the mean streets of New York to a first-class seat on a flight to Greece, and wasn't that some kind of psychedelic trip? The plane set down to cheers, and Jean asked, "Are you excited?" gripping my left arm with both of hers. The Athenian airport lacked the tunnel gates ubiquitous in the States, so we had to deplane down a ramp onto the tarmac. All around us rose the Attic hills, dotted by small clumps of shrubbery like freckles on sere brown skin, and the light was bright after the dimness of the American northeast. A dry wind blew Jean's short hair all about her face and I grinned at her, my Athena - Paris had been a fool to choose empty beauty over intelligence. Hank and then Warren were following us down the ramp onto the asphalt, each shouldering backpacks. We'd decided to travel light, and anonymously, even Warren. Just four more American tourists coming for the Greek spring.

Making our way through customs, we exited the airport to locate a cab, Hank attempting to use rusty ancient Greek on the driver, who mostly seemed confused. "You know," Warren said, "the language _has_ changed in two thousand years." Reaching past Hank, he handed the man an address on the back of a business card and the poor fellow appeared greatly relieved, gesturing for us all to pile in. Warren took the front seat and leaned forward to tap the meter - which was already running. He gave the driver a knowing smile, and the man reset it, his expression a mixture of annoyance and respect. Turning to look over his seat, Warren remarked in English, "Finding an honest taxi driver in Athens is rarer than meeting Pan in the woods."

Half the population of modern Greece lives in the city of Athens - and I couldn't get out of that town fast enough. Even so, it was my first foreign city and like a first kiss, it left an impression on me. We visited all the requisite historical sites - the Acropolis, the Agorá, and the National Museum. Yet it's the small things I recall best - the sharp fall of light that cut geometric shapes of sun and shadow, the blat of bus horns and cars, the bills plastered to poles and columns advertising everything from politicians to music groups all in a foreign alphabet, the insistent harassment of tourist shop owners in the Plaka. No one seemed to waste time in front of televisions, but visited with each other - in restaurants, ouzeris and tavernas, on verandas and porches, in kafenia and plazas. I remember how old men played backgammon on street corners, smoking unfiltered cigarettes that drifted blue haze. I remember the ever-present stray dogs sleeping in the streets. I remember how Greeks always seemed to be yelling, even when they were just talking, and how personal space was measured in centimeters instead of feet. I remember old women in black headscarves who followed the progress of scantily-clad girls in tight pants (Greek or tourist) with disapproving eyes. I remember the olive trees that blew in the spring breeze, long leaves showing silver undersides like a flash of thigh through a slit in a skirt. I remember the smell of the sea mixed with the smell of automobile exhaust, and fresh pastries and cheese from the markets, strong black coffee served in a demitasse, or a whipped Nescafé frappe with ice in the afternoon. I remember a sign in a little shop written in English and French - but not Greek, because the Greeks already knew - "If you didn't eat it, don't flush it." I remember laughing for a long time at the circumspect bluntness.

_**"Ancient of days! August Athena! Where, where are thy men of might?**_  
><em><strong>Thy grand in soul? Gone - glimmering through the dream of things that were;<strong>_  
><em><strong>First in the race that led to glory's goal, They won, and pass'd away - <strong>_  
><em><strong>Is this the whole?"<strong>_

"Come on, Scott. I thought you wanted to visit the Museum of Greek Popular Music?"

"I do."

"It's this way." Jean had her nose in a map and the Greek sun on her hair as she pointed down an alley of the Plaka, the old town where cars were mostly banned and whose signs were written in both Greek and English. Even here in Greece, English seemed to be the language of tourism. I turned away from the wrought-iron fence that enclosed the remnants of the old Roman agorá (which was different from the original Greek agorá, apparently).

"You're hopeless," I told her with a small smile as I strolled over, taking the map from her and turning it right-side up, then pointing to the alley on the opposite side. "Thataway."

The museum wasn't large or grand, like the National Archaeological Museum downtown. It occupied an old house off Diogenes Street on the north side of the Acropolis, the entrance tucked away inside a courtyard that cut off the noise of tourists and the shop-owners calling out to them. Neither Hank nor Warren had been interested in visiting a specialty museum, but Jean had tagged along to keep me company, so we made our way through three stories of displays that involved tape recordings, reproductions and instrument antiques, including a Cretan lyre from 1743. There were photographs and lithographs and prints that traced back to the fourth century B.C. showing centaurs playing a pandoura, and its medieval Byzantine counterpart, the thamboura - both the precursors of the modern bouzouki.

"Maybe I could buy one before we go home," I told Jean.

"You want to buy an antique?"

"No, dingbat, a bouzouki."

"You can't play it!"

"So? I could learn maybe."

She grinned at me and looped her arm through mine, dragging me off into another room. "Noisemakers!" she said in delight. And indeed they were - a whole room chock full of various percussive instruments ranging from bells to shot-glasses to be worn on the fingers like castanets.

It took us all afternoon, and she was patient with my interest in hearing the various recordings. When we left, we had a bag with ten CDs from the gift shop (but no bouzouki). The sun was starting its descent behind the Acropolis, which rose sharply on its rock out of the maze of ancient streets (old goat tracks, now paved with cobblestones). She turned her face up to it, and the sun framed her head like a nimbus in one of those solemn, painted icons that occupied the corners of tourist shops. I felt my breath draw in unconsciously.

_**sebas m'ekhei eisoroôsa. **_ **(A holy dread grips me as I gaze on you.)**

Perhaps alerted by the small sound, she turned and tilted her head, a smile playing about her mouth. "What?"

"Nothing," I lied. "Lets go find War and Hank and get dinner." By the time we did find them, however, it looked as if they'd bought half the Plaka, and over dinner, they showed us the mind-numbing array of trinkets and souvenirs, ranging from Greek-style fishermen's hats to worry beads to glass evil-eye amulets. "You're going to have to carry those around for the next three weeks," I warned them.

"Nah," Warren replied. "We bought a couple boxes and we'll mail them to ourselves, back in the States. Easier than carrying them - especially Hank's books." Of which he seemed to have acquired a good dozen.

"Scott wants a bouzouki," Jean piped up.

Both Hank and Warren turned to me. "A bouzouki?" Hank asked. "Wonderful! I think I know just the shop -"

Warren was shaking his head. "No way. He'll pay an arm and a leg in there." Which seemed an amusing comment, coming from the multi-billionaire, and they set to debating where I should go to find a bouzouki, but nothing ever came of it - though Warren and Hank did rise early to reach the post-office before it closed at noon, and mail their packages. The day after, we were scheduled to depart on the high-speed ferry (pretentiously dubbed _Knossos Palace_) out of Athens' port south to the provincial capital of Iraklion on the island of Crete.

The isle had been occupied by the eighth millennium B.C., though the Minoan palaces so closely associated with it weren't built for another six thousand years ... still safely in the Bronze Age. Our second day there, we woke early to ride rented bikes a little over three miles out to the ancient site of Knossos. It had first been excavated in the early 1900s by Sir Arthur Evans - a massive foundation with a maze of small square rooms, paved courtyards, recessed baths, and ceremonial chambers sporting low ceilings and wide, squat columns that looked more Egyptian than Greek. The Minoan king had even had his own flush-toilet - in 1600 B.C. I don't know why that struck me as funny, but it did. It's simple engineering; you stick a tank of water above a bowl with a release valve and a pipe down, and when you pull the cord, gravity does the work. I suppose it simply made me rethink my previous perceptions of people living before electricity and telephones. Maybe they hadn't been so different from me, and when I saw the wall frescos of naked, brown slave boys with long, oiled hair and cat-like eyes, I wondered if any of them had performed the same services to Minoan royalty that I'd given men on the streets of New York? A slave by any other name is still a slave, and I stopped in front of a fresco called _Prince of the Lilies_. But he hadn't been a prince. He was painted white, like a woman, and my guidebook said he'd likely been a slave and a bull-dancer, forced to perform for crowds in a deadly game where the stakes had been his own life, much like Roman gladiators later. Those who danced well - like the boy in the image - had become _personnes célèbre_, decorated with flowers and feted like rock stars. Those who didn't had died in agony on the arena sand. But even the winners were permanently scarred, and not by the bulls. The boy in that fresco was me, in a way.

How strange, to go to the so-called cradle of Western Civilization and see yourself not in the 'civilizers,' but in their slaves. It _bothered_ me, and not for shame at identifying with the lily prince. It bothered me that I'd gotten here on a high-speed ferry and a first-class plane seat. I wasn't a prince, either; I was a freedman, and if I had advantages now, it was my duty to use them to help others who didn't, not wallow in them selfishly. I wondered if the lily prince had saved food from his victory feasts to take back to others in their cages awaiting the bull and the sand. I'd like to think so, sentimental as that sounded.

I bought a reproduction of that fresco and it hangs in my office today, to remind me. I'm a bull dancer in black leather.

Halfway through our inspection of the site, we noticed that Warren had disappeared. "Where'd he go?" I asked, pulling Jean and Hank out of the way of a middle-aged German tourist snapping pictures of her husband or boyfriend, but Jean laid a hand on my arm and closed her eyes, focusing inward. Then she turned, pointing across the paved area below the Grand Entrance.

"He's that way."

We marched off, following our telepathic bloodhound, to find him in a paved recess that looked like yet another courtyard, cobblestone walls in a half-tumbled state all around. An ancient pine cast shade over half of it, and it was far enough out of the way to be empty of tourists besides Warren, sitting there beneath the tree in his pale suit jacket. For relief, he'd pulled it half down until the wing-rack showed, but was ready to yank it back up again if he heard anyone coming - as he did at our approach until he saw who it was.

"Don't take off like that," I scolded, because I'd been worried.

"I had to find some shade," he replied, standing as we approached across the flat flooring. "I feel like Daedalus stuck in Minos' labyrinth, except this one's made of leather and linen."

Jean had moved away a little towards a crumbling staircase, which she climbed gingerly to look around, then waved us to join her. We did so, mounting stones made treacherous by time and the passage of thousands of feet, even if it hadn't been half-collapsed already, to emerge on a low, bare hill. Jean was already making her way down into a shallow valley below, past a fence. "I don't believe we're allowed to go that way," Hank called to her, but she ignored him and perforce, we had to follow down a winding dirt road probably used by locals. We stopped some ways off in a small strand of trees that separated the archaeological site from a nearby farmer's field.

"Now," Jean said, tugging on Warren's jacket, "take it off." And we got him out of suit and rack and helped him to stretch the wings here in the open air and leaf-filtered sunshine. We had yet to find a hotel room where he could open them all the way, and the look on his face as they arched up over his head was close to ecstasy. Jean, with his jacket and shirt folded over her arm, just grinned. "Now be Daedalus and go flying," she said.

"Here? People might see."

And it was true, but she shrugged it off. "So they'll think their myth has come to life."

"Poetic, but they're more likely to think there's a mutant on the island."

"Party-pooper. Go on" - she shoved at him good-naturedly. "Take some chances, War. How many people can say they've flown over the Mediterranean _without_a plane? Her smile turned impish. "Just stay away from the sun."

He looked to Hank and me. Hank had pulled off his straw sunhat to scratch his flattened curls, but then slapped the hat back on and shrugged. "Why not? This area is rural enough that if you take altitude quickly, you shouldn't be thought any more than a large eagle. And as it's past noon anyway, most of the locals will be inside taking a nap."

I was more dubious, but didn't offer any objection, so Warren said, "Give me half an hour," and moved out from beneath the trees towards the field. No one was anywhere within sight and he launched himself straight up, great wings beating hard so that our hair gusted in the wind of it. We watch him spiral sharply, then sat down to a late lunch.

It was closer to forty-five minutes before he was back, looking wild and happy, and not at all the pressed-pants-and-Gucci-shoes son of American empire. Landing hard he grabbed Jean and hugged her. "It's beautiful," he breathed. Then, impulsively, looked her in the face and blurted, "Wanna go flying?"

She hesitated, and I thought for a moment she seemed like a wild creature offered the open door but unsure if its leash were really off. And that was Jean - she wanted freedom as much as she feared it. "Go," I said out of some instinctive knowledge that she needed this the way she needed to climb a mountain.

Glancing past me to Hank, who must have nodded, she turned again to Warren. "All right."

"Turn around" - and he positioned her in the circle of his arms, gripping her tightly beneath her breasts - "and trust me. I won't let you fall." Her face was white beneath its sunburn, but her dark eyes had gone wide with excitement. She'd obviously never been flying with him before, and that revelation surprised me, even while it didn't, simply confirming the fiasco of the previous fall. He'd offered to take me up over two years ago - but never Jean.

Launching himself with the extra weight took more effort, but Warren's strength is deceptive, and up they went, Jean squealing in joyful terror, like a schoolgirl on a roller coaster. He couldn't go as high or as far with her, as her body hadn't been made for flying, and holding her was frankly awkward - all of which increased the risk of being seen. But I thought it worth it, to see the grin on her face when she went up, and again when they came down ten minutes later. "Who's next?" Warren asked, still feeling spontaneous.

And suddenly, it wasn't about Jean's freedom. It was about mine. I'd compared myself, earlier, to a freedman, but was I free enough to stop being a slave to my fears? It had been some time since Warren had offered to take me flying, and this wasn't private, just the two of us - which (ironically) made it easier. Maybe I _was_ready, but even as I opened my mouth to say so, Hank - sensing my hesitation (if not aware of the history behind it) - stepped forward. "I'm game, if you can pick me up, flyboy."

"I think I can manage."

So Hank let Warren get a grip on him, which was even more awkward than with Jean, but as promised, Warren managed, and they were gone. I followed their ascent with a hand shading my glasses, until I felt Jean's touch on my arm. "You know you don't have to go if you don't want to."

"I know. But I think I want to."

Turning my head, I found her face much closer than I'd expected. We were almost nose to nose, the proximity startling us, freezing us like deer, and we were caught in one of those awkward moments when the balance of everything shifts. I wondered what she saw when she looked at me. Just the reflection of herself in mirrored red? My best feature was jailed forever behind ruby quartz. Except she'd said it wasn't my best feature. My best feature was my smile, so I gave it to her now, and she smiled in return, her dark eyes scanning my face as if seeking something.

_**Kai pothêô kai sou maomai. **_ **(I desire and search you out.)**

Then Warren and Hank were back, and I wasn't sure if I were relieved or frustrated. Their trip had been shorter than the one with Jean, and Warren was breathing more heavily, if not quite panting. I wondered if he were too tired to take me up, but as if sensing my doubt, he said, "I can manage one more time, unless you'd rather take a rain-check." In typical Warren fashion, it offered me a graceful escape if I wanted to take it.

But I stepped forward, deliberately turning my back. "Maybe a short trip," I said. "Don't want to wear you out." There was a pause, a hesitation like an indrawn breath, or the momentary suspension of a rain droplet on the surface on a pond, held separate by water tension before it merges. Then I felt him move up behind me to encircle my chest with his arms. I waited for the panic or revulsion that I'd felt the last time. But it didn't come. Instead, Warren began beating his wings, and we were lifting off the ground. Automatically, I shut my eyes, then was reminded of the first time he'd carried me, before I'd even known his name, sweeping me off that roof of his private prep school in New Hampshire and away from the fists of the very bullies Hank and I had just tackled for his sake - the rescued turned rescuer. But that was then, this was now, and I forced my eyes open, only to be captivated by the simple farmland patchwork of the Cretan countryside. The sunlight was bright and pure and the wind ran fingers through my hair. Without thinking, I straightened out my arms, as if they were wings, too.

I was flying.

It was over relatively quickly. Warren was tiring, and we set down only a few minutes after taking off, but I understood finally why he loved so to fly - and I remembered the love I'd had for it myself as a boy, before the accident that had taken my family and my innocence. I'd wanted nothing more than to sit at a window on my father's plane and watch the earth drop away beneath me, hoping that one day, I'd watch the same from a pilot's seat. That was Warren's gift to me that afternoon, a memory of enthusiasm to replace fear, and the recall of my desire to fly.

It was near sunset by the time we came peddling back into the big city of Iraklion on our rented bikes, and we spent the next two days cavorting on the beach near our hotel before it was time to head back to the Greek mainland. Those two days were a private hell for me after that stop-breath moment when Jean and I had faced each other in the tree line above the Minoan palace. If I'd been attracted to her for some time, I'd been able to suppress it or compartmentalize it. Now, her proximity and her itty-bitty bikini kept me painfully aware of my inconvenient crush. The fact we had to share a bed didn't help.

Traveling with three men and one woman, none of whom were paired up, didn't make for any natural division for the sake of accommodations. In Athens, the issue had been moot. We'd spent our week there living in the high-rise apartment of a friend of the professor's. Warren and Hank had taken the double bed in the bedroom and Jean had taken a foldout cot in the office, while I'd slept on the couch. If not four-star accommodations, I'd relished the chance to live as the locals did rather than in an isolated, antiseptic tourist enclave. In Iraklion, though, we had rooms at a luxury resort. It might have been easier at the youth hostel, but that one had a bad reputation, and after Athens, Warren was tired of 'slumming it.' So we booked two rooms in a great whale of a place near the beach, then had to decide who would sleep where. I would be living with Warren in the fall, but we'd have separate rooms, and I wasn't comfortable sharing a bed with him even if I knew he'd behave with absolute decorum. Likewise, Warren and Jean weren't comfortable sleeping together, as it brought back too many awkward memories. That left only Hank to room with Warren, and Jean to room with me. On the face of it, that shouldn't have been a problem. I'd slept at Jean's apartment near Columbia on several occasions, and we'd even shared a bed (if a much bigger one) in Anchorage.

Now, though, all I could do was pray she didn't notice how my words faltered in her presence and that my heart beat too fast when she turned those doe eyes my way.

_**Poikilophron athanat' Aphrodita**_  
><em><strong>pai Dios doloploke, lissomai se,<strong>_  
><em><strong>mê m' asaisi mêd' oniaisi damna, potnia, thumon... <strong>_

_**Kôtti moi malista thelô genesthai**_  
><em><strong>mainolai thumôi, 'Tina dêute peithô<strong>_  
><em><strong>aps s'agên es san philotata?<strong>__'_

_**(Cunning, immortal Aphrodite, child of Zeus, snare-weaver,**_  
><em><strong>I pray you won't break my spirit with anguish ... <strong>_

_**What did I, in my frenzied heart, most desire to bloom?**_  
><em><strong>'Who am I now to persuade to your affections?')<strong>_

I was relieved when we took a different ferry back to Athens by way of Santorini, or Thira. Thira had blown its top (literally) in 1628 B.C., burying the ancient city of Akrotiri and leaving behind a semi-circular isle like a noose, surrounding an interior bay where the volcano's mouth had been. Its sharp cliffs of volcanic ash were stacked with white-washed rural villages in sharp contrast to the water that Jean told me was as blue as the Greek flag. Postcard pretty, especially at sunset on the veranda of a little taverna in quaint Oia, where we ate octopus in garlic butter and fried tomato balls, roasted red peppers and grilled eggplant, then toasted youth and friendship with fresh, sharp retsina, a resinated white wine made in little local wineries all over Greece, but a specialty of Santorini.

After two days there, we got back to Athens and caught a bus north, up the two-lane coastal highway. I stared out at empty rural fields as the bare hills of Attika slurred into the slightly more forested plains and mountains of Boeotia. Turning off the highway, the bus traveled up an incline into the district of Phokis and the stark limestone spurs of the Pindus Range running down the spine of the Greek mainland. All around us, mountains humped away on the horizon, clouds breaking on them like waves on the backs of great, breaching whales. We'd reached the navel of the world - Delphi - curled in the shadow of Mount Parnassos. This was the ancient seat of the Pythia, the prophetess who spoke Apollo's warnings in syllables of inspired giberish. The God of light and reason, music and prophecy, he urged all who entered his temple: _**gnôthi seaton.**_

Know thyself.

But did I? It had been more than three and a half years since I'd left the streets for a mansion in Westchester and if I wasn't the same person I'd been then, I wasn't sure I knew myself yet, but at Delphi, I had quiet to ponder the question. Athens and Iraklion had been big cities, full of the bustle of alien rhythms and things to see. Delphi lent itself to solitude and reflection, and I found myself content to sit on the balcony of the room I shared with Jean - and think. We spent three days and two nights there, but I saw all of the ruins that I wanted to in our first afternoon. The god wasn't in his temple anymore, if he ever had been.

Yet he resided on the mountain still. Call me superstitious, but as I sat looking out over the olive-choked Phaidriades Valley pouring west towards Itea Bay, I could _feel _it - why the ancients had called Parnassos holy. Some land is sacral, whether from something intrinsic or because millennia of human beings have made it so by the power of collective belief, I don't know. But Delphi had it.

**enthade dê phroneô teuxai perikallea nêon**  
><strong>emmenai anthrôpois khrêstêrion ...<br>êmen hosoi Peloponnêson pieiran ekhousin,**  
><strong>êd' hosoi Eurôpên te kai amphirutas kata nêsous,<strong>  
><strong>khrêsomenoi: toisin d' ar' egô nêmertea boulên<strong>  
><strong>pasi themisteuoimi khreôn eni pioni nêôi.<strong>

**(Here I am of a mind to build an exquisite temple**  
><strong>to be an oracle for mankind ... [and] they who dwell in the rich Peloponnesos,<strong>  
><strong>as well as the men of Europe<strong>  
><strong>and from all the wave-washed isles,<strong>  
><strong>will come to query me. And I shall give to all unfailing revelation,<strong>  
><strong>answering them from my rich temple.)<strong>

"Hey, are you going to sit in here brooding _all_ day?"

I turned. It was Jean, come back from who knew where. Her cheeks were flushed from some exertion and strands of short hair fell in her face, making her look young. "I'm not brooding," I said, "just thinking." Turning back to look out at the landscape again, I added, "It's quiet here, and the view -" I gestured in place of explanation. I wasn't feeling investigative, or not of physical space. "You guys go on."

There was a brief silence behind me, then I heard the door shut. Less than ten minutes later, the door opened again and I turned once more. Jean was back and I regarded her with suspicion, expecting her to try wheedling me into vacating the hotel room.

But she didn't. Instead, she came over to take the other balcony chair, pulling her feet up and wrapping thin arms about her knees. She was wearing a voluminous knit skirt pattered with sunflowers and a sweater set that I thought might be pale green. This high up in the mountains, it was still cool in May, but her feet were bare. "Have I upset you somehow?"

It was the last thing I'd been expecting, so my open-mouthed surprise was as much an answer as my words. "_No_- what makes you think that?"

"You've been avoiding me since Crete - which takes some doing, since we're sharing rooms."

"I'm not avoiding you."

"Scott, you hang out with Warren and Hank until I go to bed, then you sneak in after the lights are out, and if they're not, you hide in the bathroom until I turn them out. And when we have one bed, you practically fall off, you sleep so close to the edge." Here, in Delphi at least, our room had two beds. "Now you're hiding in here, smoking that _pipe_, instead of coming out with Hank, War and I. What gives?"

It was a damning litany because she was right, and I had no answer except one I couldn't give her. So I focused on the last part to redirect the conversation. "I'm not hiding in here. I told you, I'm thinking. I saw everything I wanted to see yesterday." I gestured out over the rail of the balcony. "The view's spectacular, and it - I don't know - it makes me think."

"About what? The accusatory tone had left her voice; now, she sounded simply curious.

"About what I'm going to do next. I don't mean just next year, but in the future." I shifted in my seat to gather my thoughts before continuing. I could engage in only so much solo pondering before I began chasing my mental tail, and whatever my body felt for Jean Grey, she was still the one person with whom I found it easiest to discuss my insecurities. "I went in to pick my fall schedule before I left, and my advisor . . . well, she didn't insist that I name a major or anything, but she told me that I needed to be thinking about it more seriously, since I didn't have any ideas. All I know is I'm _not_ majoring in biology."

Which made her laugh. "Scott, I think you _slept_ through that class." Biology was the only course in which I'd made a grade lower than a B either semester - a C-, in fact, and I'd barely scraped by with that. Jean the medical student found it both amusing and horrifying. "But it's not unusual to be undecided going into your sophomore year. In some ways, I wish I'd been _less_ decided, in college." Trailing off and still gripping her knees, she turned her head to look out over the railing. I could have stared at her profile forever. "I've wanted to be a doctor since Annie died and I couldn't save her, or at least since I woke up from my fugue. But sometimes, I wonder . . ." And she trailed off again; I didn't disturb her. We sat in silence for perhaps five minutes.

Finally, I said, "It's not just being unable to pick a major. Redhot was taking pictures for next year's brochures and we had to write a mini-bio. One of the questions was 'Where do you see yourself in ten years?' I couldn't answer that. Everybody else had something to say, even if it was silly, but all I could write was, 'I don't know.' I told Jon" - at our last meeting before I'd left for Greece - "and he said it's because I've lived for so long where I couldn't plan for the future because I didn't know what was going to happen next week, never mind next year, so I stopped trying." She was nodding. "Now, I have to figure out again how to do that. But I don't have a clue, Jean. I don't know where I'll be in ten years." I shook my head. "I don't know what I want to do with my life, and when I look at you, or Hank, or Warren - and you know already - I feel . . . like a loser, I guess."

"Scott! You are not a loser!" But it was more shocked denial than confident assertion.

"Losers are the ones without any plans, Jean. I don't have any plans."

"So? Dr. Bennett's right. You haven't been _able _to think about a future, so it's hardly a surprise if it takes you a while to figure out what it's going to be." She reached across the space between us to squeeze my forearm. "Give yourself time. I don't think you're that different from a lot of other college sophomores who don't know what they want to be when they grow up, either. If anything, you're more together than most of them. As I told you once before, you amaze me. I look at everything you've become in the past three years and you just . . . you amaze me."

I stared at her from behind my glasses, and there was such sincerity in her face that it pierced me, my lips parting in quiet wonder.

She let go of my arm, breaking the momentary connection. "Thinking ten years ahead can be daunting when you're not even twenty - and picking a major is, too, since it means trying to decide what to do with the rest of your life. How about smaller goals? What _did _you sign up for next fall?"

"Introduction to Environmental History, Calc 2" - I'd taken Calculus 1 the previous spring - "German, because the professor insists I need another language, an astronomy lab, and - don't laugh - a women's studies class called The Making of Modern Sexual and Gender Difference."

She smiled. "Why would I laugh? It sounds like a wonderful class. You'll have to share your notes with me. I take it you'll still be singing, too?"

"Yeah."

"Have you thought about joining any other clubs?"

"I've got my hands full. I didn't realize the _a capella_ stuff would be so time consuming."

Her posture changed subtly then. Releasing her knees, she tucked one foot under the other leg and pushed a lock of hair behind her ear, not quite looking at me. "So what about Colleen Wing?" The two had met when Jean had come to visit in March, and had developed an immediate almost-antipathy - the kind of suppressed dislike that took a turn into excruciating civility like aspartame-sweetened yogurt.

"What about her?" I asked - suspicious.

She eyed me from beneath lashes. "She likes you, you know. And as we were talking about the short-term future, I wondered how she might figure into it?"

My reaction to that was such a mixture of irritation, perplexity, and evasion that my expression must have been a puzzle. "She'll figure into it exactly like she has up till now - as a really good friend."

"No interest in more?"

"No."

"Anyone else?"

Face frozen hard - and exceedingly glad of the glasses - I kept my gaze steady. "I don't need a girlfriend, Jean. When talking about the future, that's so far from my mind, it may as well be on Pluto. I'm an eternal singular, thanks." I didn't want to discuss this. For all that Jean had been my confident in so many ways, my sexuality (or lack of it) wasn't a topic I felt comfortable pursuing with her. I'd talked to Hank by choice, Jon Bennett by default, and even Warren of necessity . . . but not to Jean. The closest we'd come had been that angry confrontation in the garage over a dismantled motorbike, but that had been about my past as a hustler, not the future.

Jean, however, wasn't willing to let it go. "Why?" she asked now.

"Why what?"

She threw up her hands. "That 'eternal singular' bit! I'm not talking marriage here, Scott. Just dating."

Was she really that dense? "Jean, it's not reasonable."

"Why?"

"Godfuckingdamn!" I jerked to my feet and stalked back into the room. She followed.

"Why?"

"I don't want to talk about it!" I bellowed.

"Why?"

_"Leave me alone!" _I was so angry (and so frightened, if I were honest), I was shaking.

Her reply was soft and simple. "No."

Now it was my turn to ask a 'why' question**:**"Why are you pushing this?"

The smile that crossed her face was feeble and melancholy. "Because I love you."

For three heartbeats, my fevered mind leapt to impossible conclusions, but then I reigned it in and realized she meant it no differently than she ever had - she loved me; she wasn't in love with me. I turned my face away to hide my silly disappointment.

"I want you to be happy," she continued, "but you never seem to believe it's possible for you."

"That's not true -!"

"Oh, yes it is. You said it's not reasonable for you to think about dating. I asked why - a simple question. You refused to answer - because you don't have an answer? I can't imagine why it's unreasonable for you to consider dating - "

"Because you're not me!" I practically screamed at her. "You have no idea, no goddamn idea, how completely _fucked up_ I am! I can't be someone's boyfriend. I can't . . . I can't FEEL like that. Don't you get it? It's not in me to _feel _that." Her face was a study in mortified shock, as if these things had only now occurred to her. "And even if I could," I went on, "I'd just infect somebody with AIDS by kissing her. I won't risk somebody's life that way, not somebody I care about."

That last gave her something on which to focus, and she shook her head, sinking down on the bed she was sleeping in. "First, HIV isn't transmitted through saliva, Scott, only blood, semen, breast milk, or vaginal secretions. Blood _in_ saliva from mouth sores or other cuts in the mouth are a minor risk, but less of one for you than for someone who's HIV positive. You're _not_ HIV positive. And while, yes, you continue to be a carrier, it's a much lower degree of danger, and the chance of you infecting anybody is virtually non-existent if you pursue a few simple precautions. Wear a condom in any sexual situation that might involve semen or pre-ejaculate entering a partner's body, including through cuts on the hands, but otherwise, don't angst about it. And I'm speaking as a med student, here, not just a friend. Unless you do something really thoughtless, you can't infect a girlfriend. And you're not thoughtless that way."

If the semi-clinical tone put me off a bit, my real problem wasn't with what she said or how she said it, but with the fact she was no doubt _right_, and I didn't want her to be right. Like Warren's feelings, HIV made a convenient excuse. "Even if all that's true, being with me would still mean a woman couldn't get pregnant without getting infected, and we'd _always_ have to worry about some slip up. Like the glasses aren't bad enough, I'm deadly in _two _ways."

She managed, barely, to avoid rolling her eyes. "To your first objection, three words**: ** _in vitro fertilization_. To your second, if the partners of HIV positive people are willing to put up with danger for love, you present far less of a risk. And you're reaching anyway. I suggested dating; I said nothing about marriage and kids."

"But dating could lead to those things, and I can't go into a relationship dragging all this . . . stuff . . . behind me. That's not fair to a girl if she doesn't know what she's potentially getting."

"Scott! Would you listen to yourself? The whole point of dating is to find out if there's anything worth pursuing. It's about the process of discovery. You learn as you go, and if things seem to be working out, _then_ you can worry about details. It's not . . . dishonest . . . to keep some things to yourself at first. In fact, a massive information dump on a first date is kinda a turn-off." She was grinning but I wasn't, and after a moment, she sobered. "Look, I do realize you've got more at stake than most men, but you're making mountains out of molehills, and I think the real issue is what you said _before _you brought up HIV, or the glasses - that you were too messed up to feel." She patted the bedspread beside her. "Can you tell me what you meant?"

I didn't take the invitation; I needed the three feet between us. "It's pretty simple, Jean. I'm a fucking screwed-up mess. I can't fall in love. It's not in me anymore."

She didn't reply for a full minute; instead, she'd dropped her eyes to her lap, fisting and unfisting one of her hands. Finally, she looked up and I could see her eyes were wet. "You love your friends, or that's what you say. What's so different?"

"Oh, come on! Don't be dense!" Uncrossing my arms, I stalked back out onto the balcony and considered shutting the sliding glass door, except I couldn't lock it from outside. So naturally, she followed me out there.

"I'm not being dense," she said behind me. I didn't turn, kept standing at the white rail, glaring out over the slopes of Parnassos to the valley below. The hillside was rocky and worn by years, and some of the olives in the groves looked so old and gnarled, they might have been around when Jesus died. Except Jesus wouldn't have come to Delphi, even if the Orthodox monks claimed his mother had visited Mount Athos.

"Scott," she pleaded, "I just want to understand. That's all. You keep so many things to yourself, I'm afraid you're going to swallow one secret feeling too many and explode." I felt both her hands touch my shoulders. "You can tell me anything; I won't judge you."

"I know." But I wasn't sure I believed that. What would she think if she were ever privy to my fantasies about her, either back in my dorm at Yale, or here, in the shower each morning? Jon had said it wasn't a violation - I wasn't imposing them on her - but it set limits on what I could say, or she would judge me. "It's just . . . hard . . . to talk about. I don't always know what to say."

She didn't try to turn me, but she also didn't let go of my shoulders. "Can you try?" she asked.

Frustrated with her persistence, I said, "I have more issues with sex than you can shake a stick at, and getting involved with a woman in a way that goes beyond friendship means facing sexual feelings that I'm not comfortable with. There. Satisfied?"

There was a pause and then she began to massage my back, probably in an effort to soothe me much as I did with Warren by rubbing his wings. "Are you uncomfortable with the idea of someone else having sexual feelings for you, or with the idea of you having sexual feelings for someone else?"

"Yes."

Another pause, then she said, "Okay." Her hands on my back were working magic through my shirt, but not the kind she intended, and I stepped away from her to sit down in a plastic chair on the little balcony. I still needed space between us, which she seemed to realize belatedly and returned to the chair she'd occupied before, legs up and arms wrapped about her knees. "But what of love, Scott? If someone loved you, and you loved her, wouldn't that make a difference?"

"No." I rubbed my forehead. "What I mean is, it's not that simple. Maybe for other people, but not for me. For me, sex just . . . it dirties everything up."

"Sex isn't dirty, Scott. What happened to you shouldn't -"

"Don't hand me shit! What happened to me, what I did, it was _dirty_. And it was sex. I can't just wave a wand to make it stop seeming that way because somebody tells me sex ought to be about love. It's _not_ for me. It's not for a lot of people. That's the problem. I'm not even sure if I _want _it to be. Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Those feelings freak me out."

All that was more than I'd meant to say, and I could see the wetness in the corners of her eyes again. They glistened in the afternoon light and she wiped at them. "If you did fall in love," she asked, "do you think you could learn to put love and sex together?"

"I don't know," I replied honestly. "It's easier just to stay friends and not have to think about the sex part. Plus, even if I tried - who'd want to deal with my crap? It's not fair for me to put all that on somebody who's normal. Who wants a fucked-up boyfriend?"

"It's not a question of wanting a fucked-up boyfriend, it's a question of wanting _you_. If you love someone, really love them, then you take them like they are -"

"That's a romance novel pipe-dream, Jean. It's not fair for me even to consider some kind of relationship when I know I've got all these problems -"

"No!" Her interruption was sharp. "It's not _fair_ for you to make that decision for someone else!" The hardness in her voice knocked me out of my spiraling self-pity. "Don't patronize people that way. You got pissed off at me once because I wouldn't share my worries to avoid imposing them on you. And you were right to be angry, so think now about how you felt then."

I hadn't expected that comparison, and it succeeded in shaming me into listening to what else she had to say. "If someone loves you, it's a whole-package deal. There are things about you that regularly piss me off, Scott Summers, but so many more that I like - greater, more important things - they outweigh what I don't. You fall in love with a _person_, not a list of required traits."

And I was so focused on how trite that sounded that I completely missed the fact her generic 'someone' had become the very particular 'me.' "Love conquers all?" I said, tone snarky.

"Yes." She was serious. "Sometimes it can, and does."

She was looking at me again in that same _way_ she had in Crete, as if she sought some purchase on the smooth cliff of my expression. It made my heart pound and my mind back-peddle. "What were you telling me about dating being a long way from marriage? Or love, for that matter."

"A flood can start with a pinprick."

I just snorted, and the conversation seemed suddenly to sputter and die. Silence stretched. Dropping her bare feet from the chair edge finally, she stood. "I'm hungry, and I'm sure Warren and Hank have already stuffed themselves. You want to go get a late lunch?"

I glanced at my watch, shrugged, and stood, guilted into it because talking to me had made her miss eating with the other two. "All right."

So we left together, finding a corner ouzeri that offered souvlaki and Greek potatoes, and soccer on a TV high in one corner. Jean ordered a bottle of local red wine for us both, which we drank while we watched Greeks watch the game on the tube. Late lunch stretched into an early dinner. We talked and talked, covering everything and nothing, the alcohol loosening our tongues and stealing all my lingering disquiet. Her face was flushed pink from the heat of the place and the wine. I thought her beautiful.

After almost three hours, we ordered _mezedes_ because we were hungry again, and another bottle of wine (no one had ever asked to check my ID anywhere in the country), and when we finally stumbled out into the little street, tipsy and laughing, the sun had gone down behind the mountains. She took my hand as we climbed the steep roadway back to our hotel, and I let her. It was pleasant, and a part of me knew even then that her impassioned assertion that someone could love me despite my issues hadn't been theoretical - and all her fishing about girlfriends hadn't been a big sister's attempt to play matchmaker, even if the resulting conversation had taken a U-turn into didactic advice on dating. The fiction of our platonic attachment was belied by the simple truth of our interlaced fingers.

_Gnothi seaton. _Yet love isn't a rational thing, and it wasn't Apollo, God of Reason, who'd answered my search for self-knowledge. It was Dionysos, Apollo's dark brother, God of wine and divine madness. After all, Dionysos had occupied Delphi for three months every year when Apollo had vacated the premises - and his revelations didn't come in the form of babbled oracles from the lips of a virginal priestess.

When we reached our room, Jean hugged me once, then let go, and we tacitly agreed not to examine what had just happened, or to touch again as we joined Hank and Warren at planning the next day's trip - north once more by bus to the little village of Litochoro in the shadow of Mount Olympus. After that, we went chastely to bed, and I slept without dreams.

* * *

><p><strong>Notes:<strong> Please remember, "Climbing" reflects the state of things in 1997, not today. I tend to use Greek names for places, hence Iraklion and Thira, not Heraklion and Thera. The Greek quotes scattered throughout come from _The Odyssey,_ the poetry of Sappho, and _The Homeric Hymn to Apollo_. Translations are my own. The first quote, however, is Lord Byron - who, incidentally, was instrumental to the Greek War of Independence against the Ottoman Turks, during the course of which, he fell ill and died. You don't speak ill of Byron in modern Greece.

**On the 'Prince of the Lilies' fresco:** Scott's 'reconstruction' is, in its own way, as fanciful as Sir Arthur Evans' original, and is used here as deliberate fictional symbolism. The fresco itself is an 'authentic fake.' Evans made it from four _different _frescoes, and while those were genuine pieces, it's not a representation of anything the Minoans painted. While Evans did much to popularize Minoan culture and introduce to Greece something that at least approximated scientific archaeology (unlike that bandit Schliemann), nonetheless, his work on the Knossos palace did irrecoverable damage to the original, some of which is 90% Evans and only 10% Minoan. Because of his reconstructions, we cannot now recover what it really may have looked like. And yes, the Minoans did beat the Romans to the flush toilet, though its use was restricted to the royal chambers.

**Go on to PART II**


	18. Climbing Mount Olympus 2: Ereuthein

'"There she is - Mount Olympus."

Hank was leaning over our seat, pointing out the bus window to the cloud-occluded peak of a rather unimposing mountain in a long range running along our left flank, even as the bus turned off the main coastal highway onto the smaller road that would lead east up to the village of Litochoro.

"It doesn't look very high," Warren said from where he was sitting with Hank behind Jean and me.

"That's because you're seeing only the lower slopes. The highest peaks are all over 9,000 feet."

"And we're going to climb this in _two days_?"

"Well, according to Frommer's, yes. We have bedding reservations at Spilios Agapitos, the main overnight refuge, and if we leave at dawn on the second day, we can reach one of the peaks in about three hours, then do the descent that same day, returning to Litochoro by sunset."

"What about _in_expert hikers, which is us?"

I could hear the smile in Hank's voice. "If it takes us more than three or four hours to reach the summit, we might need Daedelus' wings."

"Ha," was Warren's reply.

Arriving in Litochoro, we checked into our hotel off a little square with wrought-iron lamps and what looked like a free-standing, four tier white-stucco bell tower with a domed top capped by an Orthodox cross. Most of the town lay east and south in picturesque, winding streets with white-washed homes and red-clay tile roofs. We ate, then all crowded onto the balcony of Hank and Warren's room (they had the better view) to stare out at the mountain we would tackle in the morning. It was breathtaking, even cut by cloud, and we went to bed early to get plenty of rest. Up before the sun the next morning, Jean woke me by bouncing on my feet under the blanket. This was her moment, her dream adventure, and it struck me as funny that such an intellectual woman was here not to visit ancient sites or museums, but to climb a mountain.

We'd arranged all our details in advance, including temporary storage for some of our luggage, as there was little point in lugging 50+ pounds up the mountain when we needed only a fraction of it. Thus, we were on our way by foot before eight o'clock, fortified with an 'English breakfast' and strong Greek coffee. This was the easiest part, hiking up a broad trail through late spring greenery, and we arrived in Priona, our first designated stop, by lunch. Easy or not, four hours uphill to 5,000 feet was still draining, and we were hot and hungry. Yet Jean was impatient, rallying all of us back to our feet by two and out the door into weather that grew increasingly brisk, the higher we went.

This next leg was harder, covering slippery limestone and rough outcroppings. Mostly, we could still walk, but some portions involved the use of hands, not just feet. I'd thought myself in good shape, but even an hour out of Priona, I was tired from the elevation and effort. "It's the smoking," Jean informed me, and while it annoyed me (coming unsolicited), I couldn't escape the fact that I was the only one wheezing this badly. Even Warren fared better, though he had the assistance of mutant lungs designed to take thinner oxygen at altitudes.

The trek made up for the physical strain in sheer, spectacular beauty. Unlike the south, the Greek north was green, Olympus rich in tall silver pine, beech and fir. There were robins, titmice and chaffinches, and at these elevations, spring still lingered. Flowers were abundant from bright red poppies on the lower slopes to tiny purple sweet pea and white saxifrage on the higher, plus the rare viola delphinantha - a pink violet that Hank was happy to tell us was unique to the range. Jean and I climbed together most of way, steadying each other over the rougher sections, and I couldn't help noticing the glances shot our way by Hank and Warren. I had a good idea what they were thinking, and hadn't forgotten my grandmother's assertion a year ago that Jean was "my" redhead, yet I made an excellent ostrich, sticking my head in the sand.

It was nearing five in the afternoon before we reached the old, ruined monastery of St. Dionyssios, and began crossing and recrossing the Enippeas River Gorge (once over a rickety wooden bridge) that led us to Spilios Agapitos Refuge at almost 7,000 feet, where we'd spend the night. It's a large place, but the patio outside was already filling and we'd dawdled on the way, making us late to arrive - and glad for our reservations. Jean and I were in for a surprise, however, when we found ourselves shown to a double bed tucked away by itself in a back building, while poor Hank and Warren were stuck with bunks. Someone, somewhere, had clearly made assumptions.

I didn't protest, and Jean didn't either. Our excuse was that we'd get a quiet night's sleep, but that wasn't the real reason, and after a game of cards with Hank and Warren and a draft of some herbal drink called (unimaginatively) "Olympus," we turned in at nine-thirty, half an hour before lights out, with Jean curled against my side. "It's cold," she said. I made her comfortable with my arm for a pillow and we fell asleep spooned together. I breathed her hair and dreamed Elysian dreams, and when I woke in the morning, although we'd separated in our sleep, she was still tucked up next to me, her face turned my way. I hated to wake her, disturb the fantasy that we'd tacitly created, but we had to get going. Reaching out, I shook her gently. "Hey, Mary Sunshine, time to scare awake the flowers and chase away the moon."

She opened one eye. "That's _not_ how it goes."

"Huh?"

"The words are 'Good morning, Mary Sunshine, what makes you wake so soon? You've scared away the little stars, and shined away the moon.'"

She really didn't have a good sense of pitch, but I didn't point that out. I had more important fish to fry. "That isn't how _my_ mom sang it."

She just laughed and threw off the covers.

The four of us dressed in warmer clothes and jackets, then ate a cold breakfast before setting out for the much steeper slopes and increasingly chilly temperatures of Olympus' upper reaches. The day was brightly clear - no clouds - and by mid-morning, we'd reached the sun-drenched Plateau of the Muses where, across a drop-off, the peak named Stefani dominated our view.

Zeus' Throne.

"We're here!" Jean yelled, racing ahead across the tough grass of the plateau, pockmarked still by light snow. Grabbing fistfuls of it, she flung it into the air, dancing around like a fool as late morning sunlight limned her in gold and glittered off the powdery stuff. It was no brighter than the light in her face.

**hê d' Oulumpon de bebêkei dômat' es aigiochoio Dios meta daimonas allous. ** **(Then she set forth to Olympus among the assembled gods.)**

She'd climbed a mountain, my Athena, and in that moment as I watched her spin on the grass, I was struck through the heart like a sacrificial beast. All the fictions I'd constructed to convince myself of a cool platonic detachment fell away. She was my epiphany and my apocalypse both - incandescent and terrible, sublime and holy. She'd climbed a mountain to prove to herself that she wasn't fragile. I'd climbed a mountain, and fallen in love.

* * *

><p>In truth, Stefani is only the third-highest peak that Olympos offers - 9,543 feet - but that was quite good enough unless we wanted to spend days treking from refuge to refuge, and we didn't. So down we went, back to Litochoro by sunset just like the guidebook had said.<p>

It was awkward for me. I couldn't pretend anymore, and I didn't know what to say to Jean, so I stayed mostly silent through our victory dinner in a little café up the main street. The others were too excited to notice, and used to my moods, but the few times they asked me something, I stumbled over words like a toddler learning English. It was humiliating. I couldn't look Jean in the eye and wondered how on earth I'd be able to sleep in the same room with her that night.

**kai gelaisas imeroen,  
>to moi man kardian en stêthesin eptoasin<br>'ôs gar euidon brokheôs se, phônas ouden et eikei.  
>alla kam men glôssa eage,<br>lepton d'autika khrôi pur upadedromaken,  
>oppatessi d'ouden orêm' epirrombeisi d'akouai.<br>a de' midrôs kakkhëetai, tromos de paidan argei,  
>khlôrotera dei poias emmi,<br>tethnakên d'oligô pideuês phainomai alla.**

**(If I chance upon you,  
>I can no longer speak,<br>my tongue is stilled, broken,  
>and a thread of fire steals<br>all through my veins.  
>My eyes see nothing, my ears hum,<br>and a cold sweat grips me,  
>a trembling all through my limbs.<br>I am new-grass pale,  
>seeming little short of dead.)<strong>

By the end of the meal, she'd clearly figured out that something was up, and as we all meandered down to our hotel off the square, she dropped back to walk beside me where I'd been trailing. _Are you mad at me? _She asked it inside my head, and that made me unreasonably angry because I feared what else she might glimpse in there.

_Fuck off,_ I sent back, _and stay out of my skull._

My harshness broke her joy, spoiling it, and my heart collapsed under guilt, but I didn't know how to fix it. She left me to rejoin Hank and Warren, reaching for the remnants of her previous excitement, but it was harsh and cheap, mere polished bronze faking gold. Warren sensed something, too, and shot me a frown over his shoulder. I shot him a bird back, which seemed to puzzle as much as annoy him.

I didn't go inside with the other three, but stayed outside with the excuse of my pipe. Perhaps predictably, Warren was back down inside ten minutes. "What the fuck was that about, on the road back there?" he asked.

"Nothing."

"Bullshit."

"I don't need a pseudo-shrink, Warren."

"How about a friend?"

I just glared. "I don't want to talk about it." But truth was, I couldn't talk about it to him. Fortunately, he'd known me - and Jean - long enough to see the obvious, and he also knew more from Jean's side than I realized at the time. She'd always turned to him when she couldn't talk to me, and if I knew that intellectually, I tended to forget it. I also tended to give more weight to his feelings for me than even he did. I was obsessed by them at the same time they put me off, but he'd long since learned to deal with them.

So now, he said, "Just go in and talk to her. Tell her how you feel."

For six breaths, I stared at him, then bent over, arms hugging my abdomen, pipe still in one fist. I couldn't speak. He didn't touch me - he knew better. Instead, he just stood there with me while all the feelings crashed over the barriers of my fears. "I can't," I said finally. "I can't. It's all wrong. All of this is wrong. I'm so fucked up. She should be with you."

"She doesn't love me, not that way. She loves you. She's been in love with you for more than a year, you dumbass."

I'd known it, and hadn't, just like she'd known it, and hadn't. (And so had Warren.)

But I wouldn't let it go. "She should be with you."

"For such a smart guy, you can be thicker than an oak. Let me spell it out, Scott. She loves you. You love her. You're good for each other. Now, get your ass up there and talk to her."

"What about you?"

"What about me?"

"It's not fair to you."

"Holy Jesus fuck!" he said, throwing up hands. "Would you get over it already?" Then he put his face right in mine, continuing more softly. "We've had this conversation. Yes, it hurts, but I've made my peace with it - and the reality hurts less than the drama you make of it." I couldn't look at him, and turned away. "You know what I think?" he continued. "I think you find my feelings for you convenient, because they make a nice excuse. You don't dare pursue Jean because it might hurt me. But the truth is it _pisses me off_ a lot more. I'm tired of being your albatross."

I thought he might say more - he seemed set to - but then he shook his head and turned around, going back inside.

I still didn't do anything. I sat outside half the night, watching tourists and locals both move about the little town square where the main road met the access highway. They walked in twos and threes and the occasional solitary, but my New York instincts never sensed any danger. Sometime around three, the main hotel door opened and Jean came out. A part of me had been expecting her all along. We needed to talk, but it wasn't in me to seek her out.

She didn't say anything, just walked across the little plaza called Platanos Square and stopped in front of where I was sitting in the moonlight on the curb of the hotel drive. No one was around just now, and she plopped down at my side, a good foot between us. "So," she said, but not knowing how to reply, I stayed quiet until the silence stretched and broke, and she snapped, "Sometimes you really tick me off, you know that?"

"So you've said. Why are you out here then?" I never could go quietly, and for just a second or two, I thought she might slap me. But she didn't.

"So, _are_ you mad at me?" she asked instead.

"I'm mad when you push me for an answer. Sometimes I don't want to talk, okay?"

"Most of the time you don't want to talk unless I _do_ push you - which I haven't this time. I asked a simple question earlier, because you're back to avoiding me again. You told me to fuck off."

Again, I didn't reply. Everything I wanted to say choked me silent and minutes slipped by until finally she rose to her feet and stalked off, got half the length of the plaza and turned around to come back, kicking me in the hip. Hard. It hurt and I exploded to my feet, grabbing her arm to do . . . I didn't know what. Vastly different impulses warred in my gut, so I yanked her close and glared. We were exactly of a height. "Leave. Me. Alone."

"Why?" The tone was mocking, and I could see that she was as afraid as she was angry.

"You ask 'why' too fucking much."

"Because you're a goddamn stubborn _ass_ of a man who can't ever give me a straight answer."

"That's right! I _can't_. I can't, Jean, I _can't_. I don't know _how_."

"Are you in love with me?"

It wasn't what I'd expected her to say, so I blurted out a completely incriminating accusation. "Don't read my mind!"

"You are, aren't you?" Her tone lifted and thinned at once. She knew she was walking on ice. "I've felt it. For days, I've felt it, but you wouldn't ever just say so, you kept insisting on -"

_I_ walked away this time. I was stubborn, furious and scared witless. So I walked away.

"Scott!" she screamed, cutting through the night quiet, yet I ignored her to keep walking. After another moment, I heard her feet pound up behind me and then the blows rained down on my back. "I hate you! I hate you!" My reaction was instinctual. Flinching, I spun to backhand her hard across the side of her head, knocking her sideways . . . and then froze. I hadn't meant that - hadn't meant to hurt her - but Jean had never learned the passivity of the abused. She came back swinging, punching me hard in the jaw, and all my fight flooded right out of me. If Jean hadn't learned passivity, I had, and I sank down on the pebbled concrete to throw arms over my head.

That was all it took. Jean has a terrible temper, but she's not really violent, and seeing me cringing at her feet broke her heart, and her fury. She sank down with me, arms around my shoulders, repeating over and over, "I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry." And maybe that was the only way the whole confrontation could have ended, because God knew, nothing less would have been enough to crack my fearful reserve. "I don't hate you," she said. "I really don't. You just make me so _mad_, sometimes. I'm in love with you but you make me so mad and scared because I don't know what you feel."

I couldn't answer, but my arms had gone from protecting my head to gripping her hard, crushing her against me, and that would have to be enough answer for now. And it was. We sat on the plaza concrete and held each other for a long time. "I have no idea what the hell I'm doing," I said at one point.

"That makes two of us," she replied.

"I'll make a crappy boyfriend," I went on.

"I don't care."

Finally, when my heart had stopped beating so hard and she seemed to be falling asleep on me, we got to our feet and went back inside. We still didn't say anything. There was too much to say. Instead, we climbed into one of the two beds in the room and fell asleep curled around each other like the night before in the refuge. Exhausted, we didn't wake until almost eleven the next morning and it was awkward when we did, but the worst of the tension had been broken and we held hands when we exited the room, all packed, a tacit agreement to something. What, remained to be seen.

* * *

><p>That same afternoon, we took the bus to Thessaloniki, the second-largest city in Greece, where it sat on the Thermaikos Gulf. If Athens had shown its classical roots, Salonika was a Byzantine city. Walking through the old town, every couple of blocks one could find an ancient Orthodox church sunk a few feet down from sidewalk level. This juxtaposition of late-archaic Roman with modern European architecture was a bit jarring. Our hotel sat on Aristotelous Square, one of the busiest areas of the old town, the kind of five-star resort that I still felt guilty occupying, but a full suite with a jacuzzi made up for the guilt. So did the fact I didn't have to sleep with Jean. Since we'd gone from friends to . . . whatever we were . . . the idea of sleeping alone in the same room with her scared the bejeesus out of me, but asking either of us to sleep with Warren was no less uncomfortable now than it had been a week ago. Maybe he understood that, because it was Warren who insisted on flexing his muscles of privilege to rent a suite, not rooms.<p>

Since all of us were tired, we saved sight-seeing until the next day, yet facing Jean that second morning was as difficult as it had been the first, with the state of our relationship still nebulous. On the bus north, I'd sat with Hank while she'd sat by Warren. Certainly, Hank and Warren had grasped that the lay of the land was changing, but graciously refrained from comment until we'd worked out the details. Unfortunately, change had never been easy for me, and I found it hard to meet Jean's eyes for more than a few seconds. Yet if we were walking side-by-side, I'd reach for her hand before long, or she for mine. And I kept finding myself grinning like an idiot for no good reason, only to begin trembling with anxiety a few minutes later. I wished I could talk to Jon, or even the professor, but they were half a world away. I was on my own.

When shops began to close down at noon, Jean and I finally took off alone. We weren't hungry for lunch, and for the second time that day, wound up walking down to the White Tower on the harbor, an Ottoman structure that made a stark contrast to the 1960s high-rises behind it. It was crawling with seagulls, and tourists toting cameras. Souvenir kiosks sold little Greek flags, postcards, fishermen's hats, miniature Byzantine icons, and cheap, chintzy replicas of pseudo-classical artwork. We paid no attention to any of it, just walked with fingers intertwined, letting the physical speak because neither of us knew how to start this conversation about the future. Jean had bought some bread and was feeding the gulls, who were aggressive and loud and crowding too close, making her nervous. Annoyed with them, I finally took the loaf from her and threw it as far as I could into the water. They arrowed after and left us alone. "Damn birds," I muttered. Like a doe, she watched me with those great, dark eyes, and hugged herself - all the cheerful forcefulness that I typically associated with her having fled somewhere between yesterday and today. I stared back, unable to look away. Time stuttered, snagging on the moment, and I blurted out, "This has to go slow."

"I know," she replied.

"I've never had . . . this." I made a helpless gesture to indicate the two of us.

"I know that, too. I knew all that, going in."

"Why do you even want to pursue this?"

"Because I'm in love with you."

And there it was, again. But - "Why isn't friendship enough anymore?"

"Is it enough for you?" She turned my question back on me even as she turned to look at me while we walked along the boardwalk fronting the rocky beach.

"But I can't imagine what you see in me!" I practically shouted it, and she flinched.

Wind off the gulf blew her hair as she said, "I've told you before why I love you."

"As a friend. You've told me why you love me as a friend, and I've always found it - I don't know - hard to believe, but okay, I've accepted that you do. But more than that? I don't get it."

She looked down, arms still crossed over her chest like a shield. "What do you want me to say, Scott? I admire you, I like talking to you - I think you're funny - and you've always been there for me. We share the same interests. I don't know what else to say to convince you how I feel."

She sounded tired, and I knew I was frustrating her with my stubborn negativity, but I simply found it too incredible to believe. "You could feel all those things with simple friendship. Why do you want more?"

In response, she actually sighed. "I don't know if you want to hear why. I don't know if it'd upset you. Back in Delphi, you said being desired bothered you."

And I _had_ said that, but everything had changed between now and then. It wasn't just anyone; it was _Jean_, and I was surprised that the 'who' made so much difference. "I want to hear why."

She nodded, but didn't speak immediately. Finally, she confessed, "When you walk into a room, it makes my heart rate go up. I get silly around you sometimes because I can't think straight - I feel like I'm twelve, not twenty-two. You're the most beautiful man I've ever seen - yes, even more than Warren - and when I look at you, I just feel . . . this whole jelly-in-the-belly thing."

My mouth had dropped open. "You really feel all that? For me?"

"Agh!" She tore at her hair, half in play, half serious. "_Yes!" _Then she dropped her hands to stare at my astonished face. "But do you love me?"

Helplessly, I just nodded.

"The same way? You feel those same things?" I nodded again, and her face lit up, transformed in the bright Greek sun. It was clear that she hadn't been as certain about my feelings as I'd assumed, and her own need for reassurance overcame my insecurities far better than all her assertions or protests. Reaching out, I took her hand and drew her up toward a modern memorial for Alexander the Great. Bronze shields and spears flanked a bronze statue on a plinth, while off to one side stretched a bas relief of Alexander facing the Persian king, Darius, fronted by a marble bench. We sat there, out of the way of tourists and joggers, and I stretched out my arms along the back. She curled up beside me, watching my face, but I stared resolutely forward, unable to look at her as I said this. "I'm not a romantic, or a poet, but if I ever lost you, I wouldn't know what to do with myself. That probably sounds stupidly pessimistic, but it's how I think. I lost my parents, I lost my brother, and until recently, I've lost most of the people who've been good to me. It's hard for me to believe I won't lose the rest of you, even if I know there's no logical reason to assume it. But I could bear losing all of them except _you_. I'd never let anything happen to you, Jean; it'd rip out my heart." Then I laughed to hear myself. "And wow - that was pretty corny, wasn't it?"

"Sometimes," she said, voice thick, "a little corn is a good thing."

I glanced over at her face, so close to mine. She was smiling, despite teary eyes. Jean's a sap, but it made me smile, too, to realize I'd said something right. We shifted so I could curl an arm around her shoulders and she could bury her face against my neck. If people still moved up and down the boardwalk to our right, none approached the statue, either disinterested or granting us what privacy they could. Although acutely conscious of our exposure, it was the very public aspect that kept me from bolting in terror. It set boundaries, and I needed boundaries for my baby steps. Her mouth pressed feather kisses against the skin of my neck as her fingers gripped my shoulder and my head was turned towards her. Every now and then, I brushed lips over her hair or brow or temple, but I wasn't ready for more, even if my body pressured me to seek it. Like a raptor, I was plunging from a great height toward something barely glimpsed below.

**Toios gar philotêtos erôs upo kardiên eliustheis; pollê gar' akhlun ommatôn exeuen, klepsas de stêtheôn hapalas phrenas. ****(Such passionate desire twisted its way beneath my heart that it poured a thick mist across my eyes and stole the wit out of my mind.)**

For the rest of our stay in Salonika, I was distracted and preoccupied, conflicted and ecstatic. Sometimes I couldn't take my eyes off Jean. Sometimes I couldn't bear to look at her. I dreamed of her constantly and worried that she might pick up on my fantasies. But if she did, she said nothing. I wondered, too, if she had fantasies about me, and that thought excited me as much as it put me off. I _wanted_ to be wanted, at least by this one person, at least some of the time.

For the most part, we'd spent our vacation looking at museums and sites, or enjoying the beach, like typical tourists, yet Salonika was a modern European city much more so than Athens, and our last night there, Warren and Jean decided they wanted to go clubbing. Neither Hank nor I were particularly interested, if for differing reasons, yet we also weren't inclined to leave them to their own devices. So after a continentally late dinner, we wandered about, stumbling upon a little basement club from which we could feel pounding drums through the concrete sidewalk. The neon sign was broken, the club's name only half-lit, and it all looked old and out-of-the-way, and clearly not meant for tourists - so naturally, Jean and Warren pulled us down the crumbling steps inside. The music was hard and angry, and in Greek, the tables small, the lights flashing in red, blue, orange, and purple, the air hot and almost too smoke-thick to breathe. Bodies had been crammed in like sardines, and the band, called Frozen Flame (according to the stencil on the bass drum), segued straight from Greek into Def Leppard's "Pour Some Sugar on Me." I almost laughed, and Warren had somehow found us a table meant for two that we made work for four. We seemed to be the only non-Greeks in the place, and stood out for our American-cut clothing - Warren and Jean in club finery, Hank in his usual JC Penny's polos, and me in Gap grunge.

Jean danced until the band took a break. I dislike dancing, and was happy to let Warren keep her company on the floor. Like me, Hank doesn't dance, either; he thinks he looks silly. I don't think I look silly; I just don't like having my body stared at. But I didn't mind watching Jean undulate to the music, and was glad I was sitting down, my crotch concealed beneath the table. When the band - made up almost entirely of women - finally left the stage, Jean and Warren returned to our table and Jean downed her whole beer at once. "Thirsty?" I asked, laughing.

"Dying."

"How about _water_?"

"Yeah, water'd be good." And she took off through the crowded bodies, headed for the bar. The rest of us shook heads and discussed what to do in Kavalla, our next stop, but when Jean hadn't returned in twenty minutes, I grew nervous and went to look for her.

The club was deceptively small, and I quickly found her near the bar with her glass of water, talking to two of the band members, whose English - like that of many young Greeks - was excellent. "Him!" she said as I approached, shaking her finger at me.

"'Him' what?" I asked, dubious.

"She says you're a singer," one of the Greek women explained.

Doubly dubious now, I glanced from Jean to the girl, who offered a hand and introduced herself as Eleni, and the other, her sister, was Athena. The juxtaposition of a real woman named after the goddess standing beside my own personal incarnation took me a little aback. "I sing for an _a capella_ group back at my college," I explained.

Eleni smiled a little, as if she knew I was downplaying it. "For Yale. She said the singing groups there were fighting over you."

"Not quite." I was blushing and glad for the foggy darkness of the place.

"Yes, they were!" Jean shoved at me.

I rolled my eyes. The beer had gone straight to her head. "I like your music," I said to the Greeks.

"You want to sit in?"

"Huh?" It sounded foolish, but that had been the last question I'd have expected from an utter stranger. "Me?"

"Why not?"

Behind my glasses, I blinked. "Uh, thanks, but I'm not sure we'd know the same songs."

"Get Hank to play for you," Jean said. "They have a keyboard."

I tried to protest further, but was overruled by three cheerful women, and thus ended up on the stage along with Hank. I doubted Redhot and Blue show tunes would go over with this crowd, so I picked something a bit rougher, but that Hank could manage on keyboards alone. "The original of this was written and sung by a woman, so I'm changing some of the pronouns," I said into the mic after the lead singer, Athena, had introduced me (in Greek). The audience seemed happy (and slightly drunk), willing to put up with a stranger on stage, and even if Hank started on keyboards alone, before long the drummer had picked up the rhythm, and the guitar, the chords. The blues aren't all that complex.

_I seen myself with a dirty face, I cut my luck with a dirty ace,  
>I leave the light on . . . <em>

_Daddy ain't that bad he just plays rough, I ain't that scarred when I'm covered up  
>I leave the light on, I leave the light on.<br>Little boy hiding underneath the bed, was it something I did, must be something I said  
>I leave the light on, I better leave the light on.<em>

_'Cause I wanna love, I wanna live, yeah, I don't know much about it, I never did, oh no ...  
>17 and I'm all messed up inside, I cut myself just to feel alive<br>I leave the light on, I leave the light on,  
>21 on the run, on the run, on the run from myself, from myself and everyone . . .<em>

_'Cause I wanna love, 'cause I wanna live, I don't know much about it, I never did.  
>I don't know what to do, can the damage be undone? I swore to God I'd never be what I've become.<br>Lucky stars and fairy tales, I'm gonna bathe myself in a wishin' well  
>Pretty scars from cigarettes<em>, _I never will forget, I never will forget,  
>I'm still afraid to be alone, wish that moon would follow me home,<br>I leave the light on, I leave the light on.  
>I ain't that bad, I'm just messed up, I ain't that sad but I'm sad enough . . .<em>

It was clear this wasn't quite what they were used to here, but they applauded kindly anyway when I'd finished. Yet it wasn't the reaction of the audience that struck me - it was Jean's. She had tears in her eyes when I rejoined her on the floor. "Oh, Scott, _you_ are my light."

"It's just a _song_," I replied, embarrassed.

"You picked it," she pointed out, which was true enough, and I accepted her hug, her face buried in my neck. Hank had started to join us, but seeing that, he gave me a faint smile and turned away, back to the table to join Warren.

"Come on," I told her, "people are watching."

"Let 'em. Can't I hug my boyfriend?"

"You're drunk."

"No, not really." Lifting her face, she smiled at me, as bright as the stage lights, then she raised her hand to touch the side of my face, stroking my cheek with her fingers. "You're not messed up inside."

"I told you - it's just a song. And I am messed up."

She shook her head, and the pads of her fingers were very soft; I couldn't look away from her mouth. "Take your glasses off," she said. The band had started up again, and I could barely hear her, but I could read her lips.

"Jean - it's dangerous . . ."

_I trust you,_ she sent to get past the noise.

_You shouldn't._

Her smile widened. _But I do. And I want to see your face - your whole face._

_You can't see my eyes anymore._

_That's okay. I remember them. _And reaching up - slowly - her hands went to the earpieces on the glasses. _Eyes shut? _I nodded, and felt her lift the glasses away.

**Stathi kanta, philos . . . kai tan ep' ossois ampetason kharin. ****(Stand facing me, dear friend, and uncover the beauty in your eyes.)**

Being unable to see made me anxious, but I could feel her breath on my face, slightly bitter from the beer. _Do you trust me? _she asked.

_Yes. _It came without hesitation.

_I'd never do anything to hurt you, you know that?_

_Yes. _At least, I knew she'd never intentionally do anything to hurt me. I felt her hand back on my cheek. Unable to see, and unable to hear beyond the pound of the rock music that echoed in my heels and chest and teeth, I was reduced to touch - her hand on my skin, her breath against my mouth, my arms around her waist, her body pressed to mine at hip and thigh. She slid a finger into my mouth and I licked it, shocking myself with the sensual joy of that. I wanted more and held her closer.

_You're so beautiful,_ she sent, _and I don't just mean your face._

_So are you, _I sent back, pulled enough out of myself without the glasses to confess what went through my head. _You're the most beautiful thing in my world._

_Can I kiss you? I don't want to startle you, but is it okay if I kiss you?_

_Yes._

So she did. And I kissed back. And I wasn't scared. And it didn't feel dirty.

* * *

><p>"You paid a <em>drachma<em> for a peach?"

"What's wrong with that? It's what? Fifty cents?"

Jean held up her purchase for my inspection. It was fuzzy and perfect, not a bruise or a mar. "I saw it and couldn't resist," she said.

The two of us stood near the docks of the port city of Kavalla, where fishing boats of various sizes had been tied up at harbor. Painted blue, white and red, they looked small and sea-battered beside the one great cruise ship anchored off shore. Now and then, a blast from the cruise ship's horn could be heard all through the town, echoing off the hills - north, east, and west - that encircled the city. On the old acropolis above squatted a Norman fort, which Hank and Warren had earlier headed up to see, leaving Jean and me to meander through the lower town, buying bread and cheese for lunch. And a peach.

"I'll share," Jean said now, and took a bite, then held it out to me. There was laughter in her eyes, enticing me, and I remembered our kiss the night before last, in Thessaloniki. Reaching out, I snagged her hand to pull it up to my mouth - but not to bite the peach. Instead, I let my tongue lick off a trail of juice that had slid over the soft skin of her wrist. She gasped, just a little, and started coughing, having inhaled her bite.

I slapped her back. "You okay?"

"Bastard," she said after a moment, wiping away tears from her fit.

"You offered to share."

She looked up to meet my eyes and I smiled - just a little - overcome by feelings I barely knew how to articulate. My head was pounding, and so was my heart. After a moment, she held up the peach to my mouth once more, and leaning in, I bit into it. It was as sweet as it looked.

So we ate our peach, and our hands were sticky afterward. We washed them in a little dribble of fresh water from a pipe, and I flicked droplets at her. She screamed and laughed and flicked me back. The day was hot, the sun bright, and after three weeks here, we were both golden from it, even Jean's fair skin. A breeze off the ocean brought the rich smell of the sea and tangled our hair. It was a day for the senses. In deference to the heat, Jean had put on a light calico dress that was probably some shade of rust or brown. It dipped low in front, showing cleavage, and my eyes kept dipping, too. I wondered if she'd worn it on purpose.

I wanted her. I wanted her and I didn't, and that confused me. It had taken days just to get used to holding her hand, and almost a week to let her kiss me. As with everything, I fought myself. But this day felt different, as if the light itself were magic, and I smiled more often than I frowned. We'd started up towards the Norman fort, too, but never made it, becoming sidetracked by watching an icon painter outside his little shop in some unknown alley. He worked with dark colors and gold, illumining the grim expression of some young martyr on a white horse. St. George - the painter told us - a Roman legionnaire who'd converted to Christianity and left the army because he could no longer support pagan rites, and was killed for it.

"I thought he was an English knight who fought dragons?" I said.

The man laughed. "You Americans and the fantasies. Giorgios was a Greek! The dragon was the Emperor Diocletian."

_St. George looks like you_, Jean sent to me.

_Not today_, I replied. _All my dragons are walking politely on leashes._

The glance she turned on me was speculative. _Really?_

We moved on. We should have been looking for Warren and Hank, but didn't. We existed in our own private world today, fingers linked as we wound through the steep roads below the acropolis. Around mid-afternoon, we stopped in a little taverna with white-washed walls and a porch beneath a vine-covered arbor. I ordered a frappe, having become addicted to the things in the past three weeks, and Jean had yogurt with Thassian honey. She fed some to me. "This stuff is ambrosia," she told me, but I thought _she_ was, streaked by variegated sunlight falling through the leaves above us. She was my goddess, my saint, my Vargas girl with the red hair and white dress - everything I'd ever wanted - and I couldn't take my eyes off of her. But it was her expression that stole my breath. It held the same kind of helpless adoration I knew I turned on her, and to have her look at me that way made my heart ache. I'd wanted so long simply to be accepted, that to be _adored_ stunned me. For whatever reason, this woman loved me and I've never come so close to crying for joy. Maybe she read a little of it in my expression, because she smiled, sweet and whole, and her eyes danced. I'm sure we made an amusing sight for anyone watching, staring at each other with such love-drunk intensity - and I didn't want to be around people anymore. I just wanted to be alone with Jean, though up till now, being alone with Jean had scared me to death. I'd turned some mental corner. "Let's get out of here," I said.

We paid and left the taverna to meander down empty streets. In this part of town above the harbor, tourists were elsewhere and locals were napping. Arriving in Greece, I'd had to get used to a different rhythm where shops opened at eight, not ten, and were shut down by one, to reopen (maybe) in late afternoon. Greeks worked only to earn enough to enjoy life. No one here bought into the protestant work ethic and somewhere inside, my north-European immigrant soul twitched, even while I recognized the sanity of their approach. Just now, I was grateful for it, since it left Jean and me to ourselves, arm-in-arm on quaint, narrow roads with wooden houses sporting brightly painted doors. A black-and-white cat sat on someone's porch, blinking lazily in the sun, and I backed Jean up against an old brick retaining wall, aggressive and shy at once, my hands twisted in the soft cotton of her dress. The moment hung suspended as we shared breath, and this was much more powerful than the other night. Today, I _wanted_, and bending in, we nuzzled our way until lips met. I'd never kissed anyone like this, or been kissed so - because _I wanted to. _Her arms were tight around my shoulders and mine around her body, and I was aware of everything - the cry of gulls overhead, that stupid cruise ship's horn, the salt in the air, the softness of her breasts, the sun baking my hair. I let my hands fall to her hips after a while and she pressed one thigh between my legs. I was hard inside my pants and knew she could feel it, but that was okay. Her breath was heavy in the pauses between kisses, and so was mine. This was what lust felt like, lust and love both, and I didn't care. She licked her way down my neck and one of my hands dropped even lower, sliding up her bare thigh under the short skirt of her calico dress. She bit me - not hard, but hard enough, and it snapped me out of my desire-drunk fugue. "Don't bite."

"Sorry." She licked the spot to soothe it and drew my hand from her thigh up to the side of her breast. I didn't know if this was too fast or not, but she leaned into me, moaning a little as my thumb found her nipple under the cloth. One of her own hands reached to rub my erection inside my pants and the knot in my center exploded. Blood boiled and the very air became hot in my lungs. Bending, I ran lips and tongue over the exposed skin of her plunging neckline. But she was suddenly pushing me back, straightening her dress and shaking tangles from her hair. Dazed, I could only blink as she hissed, "Someone's coming."

"Oh." And someone was. I could hear voices, and ran a hand through my own hair as a pair of thirty-somethings descended stairs a block down from us and turned onto the street. I felt silly and ashamed. I'd sucked off men for forty-five bucks in an alley, and Jean deserved better than that.

She'd recovered more quickly than me. Taking my hand, she smiled as we passed the two couples, and after some distance when we could no longer hear their voices she asked, "You want to go back to the room?"

I rubbed my forehead. Blood had mostly returned to where it belonged and the fuzz was clearing from my brain. "I don't know," I told her honestly. "Everything below the belt does."

Twisting a little, she laid a palm over my heart. "How about here?"

"That, too," I confessed. "It's just this" - I tapped my head - "that isn't so sure." I didn't have any illusion about what would happen if we went back. There'd been no suites in our hotel here, just a spectacular balcony view of the port and acropolis, and our reservations had been for two rooms. Jean had considered taking a third, except it would have been on a different floor, not side-by-side with the other two, so we'd decided to room together again. Last night, we'd been too tired after a late dinner to do more than sleep. Now, everything had changed. "What about you?" I asked her.

She tilted her head sideways in that way she had when uncertain, and with her eyes on the brick roadway, she gripped my hand tightly. "I want to go back."

Those five words hung heavy between us, and I couldn't quite breathe. "Jean - are you sure?"

"Yes." She glanced up at me. "But it's your call. You said this needed to go slow. You decide. No rush."

"Tell that to my body." And I didn't just mean my groin. My heart had started pounding and my stomach was doing handstands.

She stopped walking and turned to face me. We were alone again in an empty street, standing close but not touching beyond clasped hands. "I don't want to do anything you're not ready to do."

Her words won a sly smile from me. "Isn't that supposed to be the guy's line?"

Frowning, she shoved me lightly in the chest. "Chauvinist. I just meant, you know, I didn't want to put you under any pressure."

"What about you? Are you ready for this?"

Her cheeks dimpled. "I've been ready for weeks." And she moved in, sliding an arm around me to rest her head on my shoulder. "Don't worry about me." And that definitely didn't help me to think clearly. Whatever she'd said, the pressure was on, yet a part of me wondered if we weren't being too deliberate, making mountains out of molehills?

"Let's go back to the room," I said softly, nuzzling her ear.

"Okay," and she stepped away, tugging me by the hand in the direction we'd been walking, but I dragged her to a stop.

"You won't get there headed that way." She rolled her eyes, yet it broke the tension a bit, and I said, "If I turned you around three times outside the hotel door, you'd be lost."

"See?" She poked my side. "Proof that we were meant for each other. I'd be lost outside without you, and you'd stay holed up inside all the time without me."

It was true, and neatly defined our relationship, and I supposed it inevitable that I would end up with Jean. No one else could have reached past all my doors and walls and masks. She knew everything about me there was to know (almost) and was still around, smiling at me like I'd hung the sun above.

So we went back, and the thing about being deliberate meant I couldn't avoid the realities of the situation, however unromantic they might be. My semen was deadly to anyone but me, and nearing our hotel, I sent Jean upstairs with a kiss and an aspecific, "Need stuff."

Her dark eyes crinkled with amusement. "They say you can buy almost anything you need at those." She pointed to one of the ubiquitous sidewalk kiosks, set up near the hotel entrance. "Europe is a civilized place." Then she left me, and I stood there hesitating, if unsure why. God knew, I'd bought enough condoms, yet I associated them with my former occupation, and that took the magic out, made it too mundane, too familiar - small and dirty and cheap, like a business transaction. Walking up to the guy inside the little booth, I told him what I wanted, he produced it, and I paid. A business transaction. Sack in hand, I went inside and took the elevator up. And there alone in the hall, things came crashing down on me. I plopped onto the tile floor outside the door and couldn't make myself go in.

This was just another _transaction_, wasn't it? We'd have sex and then what? Women wanted romance, men wanted sex, and that's where the love stories ended. Neither of them wanted what came after, but that's what _I_ wanted - to sleep all night beside somebody and be held in the morning when I woke. To share breakfast and conversation and the laundry. I wanted a _place_ in the world, and a partner to share it. My body wanted sex sometimes, but my heart wanted a place forever, and I didn't know if I _was_ ready for this. I'd climbed almost 10,000 feet past the cloud line to Zeus' Throne, but I couldn't open a door on the sixth floor of a B-grade hotel.

Hello, Mount Olympus.

The door opened for me instead, inviting, and Jean came out to squat down beside me. "I love you," she said.

"For now," I replied, hugging my knees closer.

"Forever," she countered.

"Forever's a long time." I didn't want to believe her, even while I did.

"I know. Come inside. I want to jump your bones."

And I burst out laughing because it was so silly and blunt, and put all the deliberation in proper perspective. She wanted me, and I let her lead me inside, and somewhere in the next half hour, I stopped being ashamed for wanting her, too. "Do you dream of me?" she asked, smiling wistfully as if she hoped the answer was 'yes.' I nodded, getting a kiss for the confession.

"You don't mind?" I asked.

"I dream of you."

That was good enough for me. She let me take off her dress and stripped me out of my shirt, and if I'd seen her near naked before (her swimsuit left little to the imagination), it was a lot different when I was allowed to touch. She showed me how and where, and I taught her to touch a man, as well. This was nothing I'd experienced before, despite how much I knew. "You're a virgin?" she asked at one point, voice soft and surprised. We were wrapped around each other on the bed, nothing between us now but a single white sheet. I'd laid it over her body from crown to toes, then climbed on top to kiss her through it, stroking her chest and thighs.

Bending, I whispered near her ear, "Technically, yes."

Her hands freed themselves from beneath the covering and fumbled till they found my cock - the first time she'd touched me bare. I breathed in and she said, "Take your glasses off."

"It's not safe."

"Look, I'm more afraid I'll _knock_ them off than I am afraid you'll blink." She had a point, so I closed my eyes and removed the glasses, reduced to touch and sound while she rid herself of the sheet to lay me on my back, hovering above, blocking the light from the window. I could feel her little breasts brush my chest and her breath overrode the roar of traffic on the highway below. The air in the room was cooler than the afternoon had been, and the sweat on our skin had dried. She tasted slightly of salt, and kissed my collarbone and sternum, my nipples and the space below my ribs. It made my cock jump and she wrapped her hand around it, moving the loose skin up and down. Lying passive bothered me and I raised my head, nosing until my mouth found one breast. "Oh," she said, then was reduced to whining. Her hand stroked faster, and she shifted to cover the cock head with her other hand, circling the slit with her finger and teasing the flare around the edge, the pad of her thumb settling in the frenulum and rubbing back and forth.

It sent hot sparks all through my belly and I jerked my hips in rhythm with her hand, the pressure building heavy in my groin. I let her breast go to say, "Keep that up, and I'll come."

"I thought that was the idea?"

"Not without a condom. It's not safe." I could barely talk.

"You said that about the glasses. I told you it _was_ safe. There are no cuts on my hands, Scott."

"Are you sure?"

"You worry too much. Trust me, okay?"

"I'm _trying_."

There was more fear, and more frustration, in my words than I'd intended, and her hands on me stilled, moving to my hips instead. She kissed my shoulder and I could feel her soft, short hair on my skin. "Shh," she whispered and laid down beside me, half blanketing me with her body, one hand tucked beneath her and the free one stroking me from collarbone to belly, but no lower. My blood still pounded and I wasn't sure which was worse - if she'd kept going, or having her stop now. I rolled on top and thrust against the soft skin of her thigh. "Christ," I muttered. I'd never needed like this and it was just about release now. My eyes were squeezed shut, trying to told back more than the beams.

**dustênos egkeimai pothôi apsukhos, khalepêisi theôn odunêisi hekêti peparmenos di' osteôn. ****(Wretched I lie here as if dead with terrible desire inflicted by the gods, struck right through my bones.)**

She seemed to realize we'd gone too far, and began kissing the side of my face, pushing my head back so she could get to my mouth, and my hips up so she could get to my cock, offering her clasped hands for me to push inside, gripping me tightly, a thumb back over the endslit pressing on slick, hot skin. So sensitive, almost unbearable, and her tongue was in my mouth, sawing along the edge of mine; then she squeezed just a little and I ejaculated all over her fingers. But instead of release, I felt foolish, dirty and rushed - as if this had been a quick hand-job in a bathroom stall. It wasn't what I'd imagined, and I wanted to weep in humiliated frustration. "Shh," she said again, freeing one hand to wipe it on the sheet, then stroke my spine. "Shh." She was kissing my face again. "Relax a minute. It's okay."

"It's not okay!" I snarled. "I didn't mean -"

"Shh." The hand came around from my back to cover my mouth. "You were all keyed up. Partly my fault; I'm sorry. Now we can start over again and take our time."

And those words reminded me that this _wasn't_ a quick hand-job in a bathroom stall, and suddenly, I needed to see her. Reaching, I fumbled for my glasses on the night stand. She helped me to get them on, then kissed the end of my nose, smiling. "That was the appetizer to take the edge off the hunger pains."

I barked with embarrassed laughter at that. "Jesus, Jean!"

"Hey - I'm a med student who knows how a nineteen-year-old man's body works. Even yours." Her grin turned impish. "I'm particularly interested in studying yours."

So we studied each other the rest of the afternoon, and this was my initiation. My mystery. Once again, my self-knowledge came not from Apollo, but Dionysos, and she made me feel like a god as I raised myself above her, her thighs parting to accept me, and it was really going to happen. This wasn't a fantasy. (Fantasies didn't include awkward poking and pain.) But finally I pierced her, and she cried out, even as her legs came up around me. I felt enclosed and cherished. This was what it was about, this fumbling, naked, precious acceptance. Her whole body embraced me, and I arched into her. She made me whole in a panting rhythm older than life, the little death that led to rebirth. Euphoric and shaking with excruciating pleasure, I poured my soul into her, then collapsed in her arms.

After a long minute, my face still buried in her neck, I remembered to ask, "Did I hurt you?"

"Not any more than it required." Her voice was thick and amused.

"Shit, that sounds so fucking pessimistic." I lifted myself away and up on an elbow, careful as I withdrew so I didn't hurt her worse. "Glasses?"

I heard her reach for them, then hand them to me. "Well," she said, "there's this little thing called a hymen, and you have to break it, plus stretch me out. I understand it gets better with practice."

Putting on my glasses, I studied her face. She didn't seem upset, if perhaps a bit stunned, her skin flushed and her lips bruised from kisses. "Anatomy doesn't seem goddamn fair," I said, brushing the tangles off her brow.

The back of her hand came up to stroke my cheek. "It's not all about the orgasm, you know. Having you inside, just . . . wow. Emotionally _wow_." Turning on her side then (a little gingerly), she snuggled down against my chest, muttering, "Love you."

"I love you, too," I whispered, kissing her hair, and that was the first time I'd said it straight out without hedging, and even if she'd known I did, the verbalizing was important, giving my feelings concrete reality. I saw a smile curve her lips. We didn't move for a while, but I felt sticky and wanted to clean up, so finally I rose, pausing to look down at her, half-asleep where she lay. Beneath her thigh, there was a small red stain on the cheap white sheet and matching streaks on my condom. I touched the sheet stain, upset again by what seemed the injustice of her pain for my pleasure. Did sex always have to fucking _hurt_ somebody?

As if sensing the direction of my thoughts, her eyes fluttered open and she reached out to push my hand away from the bloodstain. "I wanted this as much as you did. Now go clean up so I can have a turn."

"Are you reading my mind?"

"Not really."

"Jean - "

"Okay, a little, but only because you're shouting."

And I recalled several times over the past three weeks when she'd seemed to know just what to say - when to push, when to pull back, and instead of heading for the bathroom, I sat down again on the edge of the bed. "How much have you been reading me lately?"

Twisting her head to glare up, she said, "I haven't, not like you mean. I never read your thoughts without permission, Scott - not unless you're projecting so loudly I can't avoid it, and mostly you don't do that. But sometimes, yeah, I tap into your feelings, just a little. I haven't wanted to upset or push you when you weren't ready, and I hate second-guessing your silences."

"Sometimes I just don't know what to say."

"I know." She reached her hand out to me and I met it with my own, lacing fingers through hers. "Your thoughts are always yours, unless you invite me in."

"Thank you." And I squeezed her hand, then released it to go clean up, trading places with her when I was done. She'd taken the sheet with her, though the sudden attack of modesty seemed silly. Stretching out on the bed, I waited, and alone for a few minutes, my mind darted in all directions while I stared out at the setting sun that bathed the room in bright light and shadows.

To say I felt different would have been both a cliché and not entirely true. After Jack Winters had raped me, I'd felt _different_ - stunned and ashamed and spoilt like bad meat. I'd never gotten over it. I never would. I'd simply learned to live with it, and everything that had followed. What I felt now wasn't that kind of change, and I wouldn't spin out some trite line about having been made a man today. How fatuous.

No, today I'd been _given_ something - and not Jean's virginity. If a woman gave a man her virginity, where was he supposed to put it? Jean's virginity wasn't my trophy, and mine (however technical) wasn't hers. What I'd been given was a new panorama. I hadn't changed - my world had, because it now had Jean irrevocably in it, and room for trust, and maybe hope. And love. And if I hadn't given her my virginity, I had given her my _vulnerability_, and that was far more precious. I'd been initiated indeed, and the mystery revealed was that I could offer up my heart without regrets. I smiled to think on that.

The door to the little bathroom opened and Jean came out, trailing that sheet like the train of a wedding gown. Her expression was tentative, until she saw my grin, then she grinned back and moved towards me. And as she crossed in front of the balcony windows, the sunlight caught her, haloing her willowy figure like a gold-washed icon, fired passion-red to my sight.

And that shall always be my clearest memory of Greece, and my sweetest of Jean, with the sun setting over the Aegean behind her and the light of a trembling joy in her face.

* * *

><p>But in keeping with my unerring ability to shoot myself in the damn foot as soon as something good happened to me, I woke up beside her the next morning in the grip of a nervy remorse and inchoate anger that was the complete opposite of the previous day's joy and hope.<p>

Rather to my surprise, I'd discovered that I _liked_ sex - which may seem the most absurd observation ever, given that I was nineteen, healthy, and in bed with the woman I'd been fantasizing about for the past two years. But of course, I had to drag all my flaky _shit_ into bed with me, which complicated everything.

Jean and I had made love - or flat fucked like bunnies, really - three times the previous afternoon, to the point that she'd been too sore even to think about walking to dinner. So I'd gone to the door to inform Hank and Warren that she 'wasn't feeling well' and then sent them packing. They hadn't argued, even if they'd both looked inclined to ask questions. Unprepared as yet to go public with the full truth, I'd shut the door (quietly) in their faces. Then Jean and I had fucked again, because when it came to sex, I had all the self-discipline of a two-year-old - one of several unpleasant things I discovered about myself, another being that I wasn't much of a lover.

Prostitution makes poor preparation, whatever the porn industry would lead one to believe. You turn your body off in order to make it through. It's all about the john - either pleasing him so he pays you, or pleasing him so he doesn't beat the crap out of you. Thus, when I turned my body back on, I had to turn my _brain_ off in order to avoid the same sort of flashback I'd suffered with the condoms - a reminder of my former profession that short-circuited everything. If I wanted to stay hard, I had to permit my body to take over, which didn't lend itself to any real sensitivity to my partner. Yet Jean had been patient and gentle and focused on me yesterday, even though it had been her first time and my one-thousandth-and-whatever-the-fuck-it-was.

Therefore, when I woke on the morning after, the first thought to ambush me wasn't my happiness, or her beauty, or even that I needed a smoke and some coffee. The first thought was that I'd defiled her and screwed over our friendship forever. So I hit the bathroom for a piss, brushed my teeth, put on rumpled clothes, left a note on my pillow that read, "Sorry," and fled the room. First, I headed north into the maze of little shops catering to tourists, then bought a pack of Greek cigarettes (harsh and sharp, but with enough nicotine to pump the whole of New York) and drank bitter Greek coffee while I smoked them all on the patio of a little café. I watched the morning surge of crowds moving to and fro, and once or twice, a few girls tried to flirt with me. The second time it happened, I shot them a bird.

I was feeling sour, angry and mean, and debating whether or not I had enough courage to face my friends ever again, or should just shoot myself now. (All right, so I was feeling sour, angry, mean and melodramatic.)

And it was in that frame of mind that Jean, walking a bit carefully, found me - Jean in a towering rage. Yet that was what I needed. If I'd been given pity or sympathy, I'd have taken it and run, and learned nothing, but the fury in Jean's face said I wasn't getting either, or any quarter, for that matter. "You," she bellowed when still halfway across the street, stalking over to the rail surrounding the café porch and gripping it with white knuckles, "are the biggest **ASS** I have ever met!"

I dropped my eyes and stubbed out my (second-to-last) cigarette, pulling the final one from the pack. "I know," I said, lighting it.

She pursed her lips and turned her back on me for a minute, then fished in the pocket of her skirt (the same pretty one with sunflowers that she'd worn in Delphi) and turned to slap down the 'sorry' note in front of me on the small, round table. She still stood on one side of the rail while I sat on the other. "What the _hell_ does that mean?"

Picking up the note, I set the burning end of my cigarette to it and watched it turn to black ash. "Apparently nothing," I replied. I was feeling fey and fatalistic, and acting ridiculous, which I knew even at the time, and still persisted in it. I was aware that both café patrons and strangers walking the street were watching us. Unlike the afternoon before, it was the height of business hours and we were putting on an unintentional show.

Jean had leaned over the rail again, close enough to hiss, "What is _wrong_ with you? Did yesterday mean nothing at all?"

She was so mad, her fair skin had gone red and mottled, and I should have seen in that a plea to be reassured, but had sunk so far in my own self-pity (and deep-seated uncertainties) that I missed it entirely. Even so, it took me almost a full minute to reply, I was so humiliated and ashamed. Finally, I managed, "The 'sorry' was because I made a colossal mistake yesterday. I can't undo it, though I wish to God I could. I did the absolute worst possible thing to my best friend - I used you, because I'm a screwed up son of a bitch."

I can't describe the expression that crossed her face. 'Hurt' was too trite; 'crushed' came closer. In a matter of seconds, she went from mottled red to as white as a ghost, and for a moment, I thought she was going to pass out. Her lower lip trembled and her eyes filled even as I watched. "You _don't_ love me," she said, then turned and walked away.

**taisi de psukhros men egento thumos, par d' ieisi ta ptera . . . ** **(But their hearts turned cold and dropped down their wings . . .)**

Everyone is entitled to at least one epiphany in his life, and that was mine. Maybe the day before had opened my eyes to possibilities I'd believed reserved only for other men, but this morning I'd been quite willing to close them again, and it took seeing her heart break in front of me before I really, truly _believed_ that she loved me.

I'd say I'm dense, but that doesn't begin to cover it.

Fortunately, I'd paid for my coffee when I'd bought it, so now, I dropped my cigarette in the ashtray and abandoned my demitasse, shoving back my chair and vaulting over the white rail in a single leap - to the shock of other patrons and a group of three retired women tourists in the street whom I almost crashed into. In too much of a hurry, I didn't even apologize. "Jean!"

She was only twenty feet away, but kept walking. I caught her right at a corner, practically knocking her down as I grabbed her arms and spun her around to face me. "No," I said, breathless from panic, not the short sprint. "That's wrong. That's all wrong. Goddammit!" Frustrated, I banged the heel of my hand into my forehead. "I am such a stupid, stupid prick." Then I kept banging because I hated myself in that moment. "I love you, dammit. I fucking love you more than I can fucking say." Other people in the street were staring - or trying not to - but I was so upset I no longer cared.

She'd grabbed my hand and pulled it away from my head, then gripped the other wrist, too, for good measure. "Stop it, Scott. Stop it." She appeared genuinely worried - but also still angry, and she was still crying. So was I. She pulled me a little closer to the building, and hands on my shoulders, peered into my face. "But if you love me, then what did you mean back there, that you'd made a colossal mistake and just used me?"

I couldn't look at her and was still crying. Upset, I twisted out of her grip. "It was your first time, but I was just thinking of me - it was all about me, and I'm a shitty lover and a shitty boyfriend and I don't deserve you. You're my Athena and I'm just Hephaestus. He tried to rape her, y'know, then jacked off on her goddamn _leg_, and I must disgust you."

She was back to being mad now, and shook me, hissing, "Would you stop it! Just stop it before I _slap_ you!"

It took a minute or three, but I did manage to calm down enough to quit shaking and crying, and how much of my emotionalism had been exacerbated by too much coffee and too many cigarettes? Finally, I wiped my nose and said, "See - it always ends up being about me. I chased you down to tell you I do love you, and you wind up keeping me from freaking out. I told you, I'm fucking _screwed up. _You can do better."

"What if I don't want to?"

That made me look at her finally. "What?"

"I don't want to do better than you. It's that simple. So get over it - you're stuck with me."

In spite of everything, that made me smile, just a little. She'd always had that effect on me: piss me off, drive me around the bend, then make me laugh about it, just a little.

"The question," she said finally, and there was just a bit of the fear back in her face - wide eyes and a tight mouth - "is whether you want to be stuck with me? I mean, it goes two ways."

And I was reminded of her utter despair when she'd thought I'd never been in love with her at all. Managing to pull myself out of my own self-absorption for a moment, I cupped her face and kissed the bridge of her nose. "I told you yesterday that you were the most beautiful thing in my world and I wasn't kidding." Then I wrapped her up and held her a minute. "I'm just such a goddamn mess, I don't feel I deserve you."

"Let me be the judge of that, please." It was one part long-suffering, one part reassuring, and one part miffed. She pushed me away. "And God, Scott, I'm sorry, but you stink."

For a minute, I thought she meant metaphorically, not literally. "I've been telling you I stink all morning."

"No, you idiot." She'd put up a hand to pinch her nose. "I mean you stink like a bar - all those cigarettes and stale coffee and sweat, and I'm sorry, I know how trivial that sounds right now, but I just -" She'd backed up about four steps.

I should probably have been offended, but she was right, and I had to find it funny how the mundane physical could so thoroughly intrude on even the most intense emotional moment. "It's okay. I take it I need a shower?"

"Yes. And so do I, for that matter." She looked off to the side and ran a hand through hair that I only now realized was a bit stringy. "I woke up to find you gone with just that stupid note . . . so I threw on clothes and came after you." She turned back, aquiline nose scrunched up, half in play, but half in real irritation. "You're pretty high maintenance, you know that?"

Embarrassed, I shrugged. "So why, again, do you want to be stuck with me?"

"I love you?"

It was half-playful and maybe even a tad fished for, but still made me blush and look down because I felt so ridiculously grateful. "I love you, too. I've loved you for two years, so never doubt it again, okay?"

"Two years? Really?" She seemed surprised by that. "Why didn't you ever tell me?"

I shot her an exasperated look from behind the glasses, but she shook her head, took my hand, and led me back towards the hotel, weaving through the crowds. No longer a show, we became anonymous again. "You know," she said, "you really are high maintenance, like one of those purebred Dobermans who can't be left alone for very long or they flake out and rip up the furniture."

The comparison - and the broken tension - made me laugh. "My girlfriend thinks I'm a dog!"

She elbowed me. "Well, it's true! Our neighbors had a Doberman who couldn't stand to be left alone. When both of them went back to work full-time, the first day they left her, she tore up their bedroom - literally shredded everything - then burst through the bedroom window, metal frame and all_,_ and by the time they got home that evening, they found her sitting on the lawn, waiting on them. You get the same way." She eyed me shrewdly. "You angst yourself into the silliest mental places." Before I could react to that, she paused and turned to me.

"Look, I know why. I'm not making fun of you and I do understand. I just" - she sighed and for the first time, looked truly _tired_ - "it's draining. I love you _so_ much, and hate to see you beat yourself up all the time. It makes me want to throttle you as much as it makes me want to love you out of it."

The very real honesty of that shot me full of the first _reasonable_ guilt I'd felt all morning, not something trumped out of proportion. I stroked her cheek with my free thumb. "I'm still a fucked up mess, Jean, and I'll probably always be that way somewhat. You _don't_ have to come along for the ride - and I'm not saying that to make you feel sorry for me. I'm saying it because I can't promise I won't bust out of the house through a window again. I probably will. It'll get old, you know, but this is what I'm like. I get stupid, I get depressed, and I get possessive even when I don't have any reason to be. The whole time you were with Warren . . ." I put a hand over my glasses in shame. "I was so unbelievably jealous, and didn't want to admit it. I didn't even want to admit _why_ I was jealous. I'm always going to be weird like that." I started to add that I was damaged goods, but knew it would only make her angry, even if it were true.

She was nodding, however, as if unsurprised (and undeterred) by what I was saying. "I know all that. I'm not going into this blind - I knew from the beginning this wouldn't be smooth sailing. And" - she grinned - "I'm a bit flattered that you'd be jealous. I can do without the possessive bit, but it's a compliment, that you'd be jealous - that I could make you jealous."

The phrasing bothered me. "Don't make me jealous on a regular basis, okay?"

"I wouldn't." And her smile shifted from impish to sweet as she took my hand once more and we began walking across a public square not far from the market where she'd bought the peach the day before.

"What did you mean, you knew 'from the beginning' this wouldn't be smooth sailing?" She'd made it sound as if she'd _planned_ all this. "_What_ beginning?"

Her fingers tightened on mine and our hotel was in sight. "Don't get mad, okay?"

But of course I was starting to. "Just answer the damn question!"

She sighed. "This is why I can't talk to you sometimes."

"Jean . . ."

"Fine! The professor warned me!" Then her voice softened, almost contrite. "Way last fall, after Warren and I broke up. It wasn't just Warren, you know. We both realized we didn't love each other, we were each in love with you. It was . . . pretty crazy."

If I hadn't known that for sure, I'd suspected it, so I said nothing, waiting.

"So I went to talk to Charles about what I was feeling."

"He didn't tell you to stay away from me?" I found it hard to imagine that he'd approve of this, and I hadn't even _thought_ about that, had I? How was I going to tell him?

"Far from it," she said now, and that made me stop dead and stare. "He doesn't make judgments like that. Well, not really. I think part of why he didn't let me sleep in the same bed with Warren last spring was because he knew, even then, that we weren't in love with each other. He wasn't being a prude, like I thought. He was just trying to keep us from making a mistake, without stepping in to tell us we were making a mistake."

"Because you wouldn't have listened."

She grinned. "Exactly."

"So he doesn't think this would be - is - a mistake?"

She held my eyes behind the glasses. "He didn't say, and he wouldn't, but call it a telepath's hunch about a telepath . . . I think he'd be _glad_. He's a bigger romantic than he lets on, and he loves you. He wants you to be happy."

"What about _you_?"

"He wants us both to be happy. And he's not above a little - I won't say manipulation, or even matchmaking. But when I talked to him about what I felt, he sure wasn't putting up roadblocks, and we talked - several times. He said he didn't want us to get hurt, and pressed me a lot about whether I was ready for this, whether I loved you enough to go through your healing with you. He _does_ love you, and looks out for you, and even if I think he was secretly kind of glad, he was still dead-set on making sure I knew what I was getting into - and I wouldn't hurt you by jerking you around and then dumping you when I realized you had some issues."

I snorted at that. "'Issues' is PC for saying I'm freakin' _mental_."

"He did _not_ say that. He said you were wounded."

"Mental," I repeated, stubborn. "And what did he warn you about?"

She shrugged, as if unsure whether she should tell me. "Well, he pointed out that you'd need a lot of reassurance, that you'd probably have a hard time believing you were worth being loved, and that you'd have up days and down days. He also said" - she took a small breath - "that you'd probably have hangups about sex. And _that_ was a bit of a weird conversation, but only at first." I could imagine, and my face must have been stark. Her voice dropped low. "He said that most survivors wind up having certain things that are triggers for them - things you might react to badly, or couldn't do."

"The condoms," I said.

"What?"

"Yesterday, buying condoms. I only ever bought them before for . . ." I trailed off and scratched the back of my head. "It weirded me out."

"That's why you were sitting in the hall?"

"Yeah."

"You want me to buy condoms next time?"

"No, no." I scratched the back of my head again. "I'll get used to it. I just - I won't wait till right before. I had to then, because it wasn't like I'd come _prepared_ for this, but next time . . ."

"Next time you'll be my boy scout."

I snorted. "Yeah, right."

Finally, we began walking again, hands linked. "Was there anything else?" she asked.

"Anything else what?"

"Like that. Like the condoms. Yesterday, I mean. Anything I did . . ."

"No." Well, that wasn't entirely true, but it was difficult to explain and we were silent for the rest of the trip back to the hotel. Just before we entered, I stopped to look down at my feet and, hands shoved in pockets, admitted, "The problem is this - when it comes to sex, there's almost nothing we could do that wouldn't remind me of something. I've done everything you can think of and then some. It's not the _what_ that's different really, Jean. It's the how, and why. And a lot of it isn't anything I can point to with a simple 'do this and not that,' okay? Sometimes it's just _thinking_ too much and I lose it, but that doesn't make me very attentive to you." I glanced up at her. She was listening intently, not with amusement, so I went on.

"What upset me this morning was waking up and realizing yesterday was your first time . . . and it had been all about me. You did everything I wanted, but I've had sex . . . way too much. I wanted it to be special for _you_, and it wasn't. I felt selfish."

There. I'd managed to put it into words finally. A minute passed, then I felt her reach out for my hand - literally pulling it from my pocket to slide her fingers into it. "Yesterday _was_ special, Scott. It was _amazing_, in fact. I have no regrets."

Surprised, I looked up. "I'm a crappy lover."

"You're an _inexperienced_ lover. So am I. And I told you yesterday, it's not about the orgasm - which, by the way, I did have a few of, if not necessarily during intercourse - sometimes it's just about the closeness. To have you _trust_ me, that's what made it amazing. And who the hell cares how many times you've had sex? It was the first time I've been made love to. And it was the first time you've been made love to, as well, wasn't it? And maybe that's a corny distinction, but I'd say it's pretty real."

Her thumb was rubbing the back of my hand, almost compulsively, and I gripped harder to still it. "It's not a corny distinction," I said. "And yeah, I think it's pretty safe to say yesterday was the first time I've ever made love." I lifted my eyes again to find her smiling. I smiled back.

"Wanna do it again?" she asked, smile widening.

"Yeah, I do. But I thought you said I stink?"

She laughed, and the sound was easy, relaxed - no hint of the furious Jean of half an hour before. "That's what showers are for. I'll wash your hair if you wash mine. It's easier than trying to do it myself with that little hand-held showerhead." Greek showers, we'd discovered, weren't quite the same as American.

So we went inside and took a shower together, then made love in the bathtub - which isn't half as easy as movies make it out to be with two relatively tall people in a standard tub. We got a lot of water on the floor, and didn't get finished until almost noon. "I wonder where Hank and Warren are," I said while dressing.

"I have no idea. They saw me this morning, so they kinda . . . laid low."

"Your reputation for rages precedes you," I teased. All the men at the mansion had long ago learned that when Jean lost her temper, retreat was usually the better part of valor. "How much do you think they know?"

"Oh, I'd say pretty much everything." I jerked my head up at that. She went on, "They both got an earful this morning. I was way too angry to be coy, so they know what went on yesterday in gist, if not in explicit detail. I'm surprised they weren't hanging around to see if you came back as hamburger meat or in one piece." She walked over to lay her palms on my shoulders and run them down the fabric of my shirt. "You wore it finally."

I glanced down at the blue silk shirt Jean had given me for my birthday two years ago. "Yeah, I wore it finally. It seemed fitting, since the day you bought it was the same day I realized that I was in love with you - or at least had a crush on you."

Her eyes flashed up from the fabric to my glasses. "Honest?"

"Yeah, honest."

"That was a long time ago."

"I told you."

She patted the fabric again. "No wonder you were acting so weird that day. I had _no_ idea, you know."

"I didn't intend you to." I didn't tell her what else had happened that afternoon, in the food court.

"Shall we go find" - she was interrupted by a hard knock on the door - "the guys," she finished, walking over to open it. But it wasn't just Warren and Hank on the other side.

The professor motored into the room. "My sincere apologies for interrupting your holiday, children," he said gravely, and if he knew what Jean and I had been doing just twenty minutes prior, he didn't let on. I tried to control my astonished gape at his arrival. "There's an emergency with a young lady in Cairo - another mutant. I fear that her life may be in danger."

I glanced over at Hank, then at Warren, remembering a similar call over three years ago now, which had brought Warren into our fold. "So we go fetch her?" I asked.

"We go fetch her," the professor agreed. "Pack your things. I'll meet you all in the lobby in ten minutes."

* * *

><p><strong>Notes:<strong> Thanks to Arya for pinch-hitting on edits. The subtitle means 'to grow red' and is used of ripening fruit, but it can also mean (in poetry) to become engorged with passion - a double-entendre. The Greek in this section comes from the _Iliad_, Sappho, and Archilochos. There are a variety of paths up Olympus, but the two main peaks, Stafani (the Throne) and the higher Mytakis, are on two different routes. One can do a two-day trek to one or the other, or one can spend several days exploring all the peaks. St. George was neither a Brit nor a Greek, but a _Syrian_; otherwise, the information the icon painter relates is correct. Frommers is for Naomi, and Frozen Flame is at the request of Anya (they're a real Greek rock band) with thanks for tracking down Greek info. On the words to 'Mary Sunshine,' my mother really did sing it the way Scott recites it, and I only learned years later that was wrong. I still persist in singing it 'wrong' to my son, even if I know better, and thus, we see how folk tunes change and evolve. The song Scott sings is "Leave the Light On" by Beth Hart.


	19. Princes of Maine, Kings of New England

After living in proximity to Xavier for over three years, I'd seen a lot of reserved expressions in his face, including nervousness, but never _fear_ - and he was fearful on that chartered flight to Cairo. If he had any opinion on the changed nature of my relationship with Jean, it clearly wasn't on his mind. He spent the trip in meditation, leaving the four of us to confer in the back of the jet in quiet voices. In fact, before we'd even left the hotel room in Kavalla, he'd sat each of us down to put telepathic blocks in our minds. 'This won't stop a full-scale assault, but it should cause anyone snooping to slide over you like slick shoes on ice," he'd explained.

"There's a telepath in Cairo?" Jean had asked, face pinched and white. Of us all, she best grasped the gravity of a situation that could alarm the professor enough to place protections in our heads.

"Indeed," was all Xavier had replied, adding, "I shall leave the four of you to find the young lady, while I deal with the telepath."

"Do you want me -?"

"No. I don't want you to use your telepathy at all, in fact, Jean, under any circumstances. The four of you will remain together and I will give you an idea of where this girl can be found, what she looks like, and something of her background - but shall leave you to convince her to return to New York and then get her back to the plane. If I have not returned by sunrise, you're to depart for Westchester immediately. I've left further instructions for you there."

It was the most unsettling thing I'd ever heard from him, and even if he hadn't said so, I think all of us realized that if he hadn't returned by sunrise, it would be because he was dead - or worse - and the instructions waiting would be what to do in such an eventuality. That he'd prepared them even before leaving the States had only fueled my alarm.

But he'd looked at me gravely, and I'd understood that I was in charge. I'm not sure why, even then, it had been assumed that I - the youngest - would be the leader, and he gave no formal directive, 'Listen to Scott' or 'Follow Scott.' He'd just looked at me, and when we'd arrived in Cairo and the professor had departed for his confrontation after offering a handclasp to each of us - me last - they'd all looked at me, too, and Hank asked, "Where do you want to start?"

That was how I became leader of the X-Men, even if we weren't X-Men just yet.

We'd been told that the mutant girl was hiding out in the Khan al-Khalili marketplace, apparently making a living as a pickpocket, so we went directly there. The place was ancient, with narrow, crowded streets and tiny alley passages shaded by colorful cloth awnings and spilling over with vendors and buyers, both Egyptian and not. It smelled of spices, frankincense, perfume, sweat, and the ever-present bitterness of automobile exhaust. I was overwhelmed by the setting and noise, and when a merchant jumped in front of me, waving a tooled brass bowl and grinning, I actually flinched back. People got too close here and I was reminded even more than I had been in Greece that I preferred a large circle of personal space.

"You know, if she's wearing a veil, I don't know if we'll even recognize her," Jean commented. Many of the women we saw wore head-coverings, and several stands displayed collections of cotton scarves. At one, I ran my hand through the soft fabrics surreptitiously, half embarrassed by my simple pleasure in the sensual, as if it were evidence of some weakness. I'd always liked soft things, from the fur of cats and dogs to the polar fleece blanket on my bed to Jean's fine hair, and a part of me had feared it evidence of some intrinsic effeminacy that had made me a whore. My rational mind told me this was ridiculous, but I couldn't quite erase the feelings, and I jerked my hand away from the cotton scarves - until I saw Jean reach out for them, too. "Aren't they wonderful?" she asked, as if she just assumed I would agree.

"Yeah," I replied.

She picked one up and rubbed it against her cheek - then against mine. "I know we're supposed to be looking for the girl -"

"I'll buy it for you," I interrupted, wanting to please her.

"I can buy it for myself -"

"It's not going to break the bank for either of us," I said, taking the scarf out of her hand. "Let me."

There was no price on it, and I had no idea what such a thing would cost, so I paused in confusion; she must have guessed my question from the expression on my face because she said, "Offer about twenty dollars. That's a fair if low price. He'll ask for more, so go up a little, but not too much. You want to be generous, but not look a fool."

I started to ask how she knew all that, then remembered what she'd told me before - that she _knew_ a great deal more than she'd actually experienced. So I bartered for her scarf, and then laid it over her hair, and for a moment, it was just the two of us in that busy place, until someone - Hank - cleared his throat behind us. Blushing, I turned, but he wasn't annoyed or even unkindly amused. "That way or that way?" he asked, indicating two different alleys. Warren, I noticed, was standing out in the center of the roadway, his back to us.

"That way," I said, though I was just pointing at random. "If we keep making right turns, it'll help me keep my sense of direction."

"You assume there is some rhyme or reason to the Khan," Hank replied with humor. "But, I have" - he reached into the breast pocket of his Cuban shirt and pulled out - "a map. We're on Sikkit al-Badistan, not far from the old courtyard."

"I'm more worried about finding _the girl_ in all this shit."

"Indeed," was all Hank said.

In fact, it took us only ten more minutes to find her - because she tried to pick my pocket. Talk about choosing the wrong mark, but it was lucky for us, and dressed as I was in blue silk and good slacks, I looked exactly like what she took me for**:** a rich boy on holiday in the Mother of Cities.

When I felt a body brush up against me, I instinctively jerked away, and thus, sensed the feather-light fingers fishing in my back pocket (where my wallet wasn't, anyway). Twisting with street instincts, I grabbed her wrist and yanked her towards me - found myself face to face with brown eyes in a brown face under what must be startlingly _white_ hair under a veil.

She was pretty. And slight. And startled, clearly, to have been caught, twisting in my grasp, hoping that surprise would make me let her go. "You're not going anywhere," I snarled, annoyed that she'd tried to rob me.

She came back with a string of obscenities that put even my vocabulary to shame, ending with, "You cannot make any charge stick, _American_." And from her tone, it was clear the national label was the worst obscenity of all. Xavier had told us that she spoke English, but I hadn't expected it to be so colorful.

"How about the charge of being a mutant in a Muslim country?" I spat back.

She froze, but only to glare, lips tight with anger. Hank, Warren and Jean had crowded around the two of us, and some of the locals were watching - and not in a friendly way. They might have suspected that the girl had tried to pick my pocket, but she was theirs . . . and we weren't.

"If you think being a mutant would be enough to convict me of anything, you know nothing of the Brotherhood of Islam where even the jinn, spirits of air and fire, may hope for heaven!"

"Maybe, but _you_ are not Muslim," Hank broke in, smiling at her.

Her reaction was so surprised that she didn't think to deny it. "How would you know?"

"We know quite a number things about you Ororo Munroe." He was still smiling, trying to look friendly, despite my grip on her arm. "We know your father, David, hailed from New York, a professional photojournalist, and your mother, N'Dare, was royalty from the Kikuyu tribe of the Bantu, in the central Kenyan highlands. They met in Nairobi, where you were born, and then moved to Cairo, where they died - leaving you at the mercy of the Egyptian streets."

Her mouth had fallen open in shock, and Hank added quickly, "We aren't here to harm you. In fact, we came to protect you and take you back to New York - help you find your father's family in the city, if you wish."

Lips thinning at that last, she tried to yank her wrist out of mine, but even if my grip had relaxed somewhat, I was still on guard. "Sorry," I told her while she twisted at the end of my arm like a fish on the line.

"If you really knew anything about me, you white sons of a bitches, you would know my father's _family_ does not want anything to do with his African by-blow."

Hank didn't miss a beat. "Then we could help you to return to your mother's family in the Central Highlands."

She spat at his feet. "I am even worse to them, half _American_ black. I was _why_ my parents came to Cairo." Then she turned her angry face away.

That seemed to run Hank out of words, but I recognized her anger and fear, her distrust and the outright contempt for charity. No amount of fast talk in the middle of a city street was going to overcome it. She didn't trust us, and why should she? We'd done nothing to merit it.

Turning to the other three - without letting go of the girl - I said simply, "Let me talk to her." All three of them looked at me for a moment, looked at my hard grip on the girl's wrist, but then drew back without protest.

"We'll be down this alley," Hank said, pointing to one that boasted coppersmiths. And they left.

The girl Ororo seemed astonished by this interplay. "What the fuck was that about?"

"Talk to me for twenty minutes?" I asked. "I'll let you go, you give me twenty minutes, and if you're not convinced, you can leave. I won't chase you."

Her smile turned sly. "You could not catch me, American."

"You might be surprised." And I held up the wrist I still held, to underscore the point. "And my name's Scott."

The dark eyes narrowed, then her chin came up. "All right. Twenty minutes. You buy me tea."

"Fine." I let her go. This was part of the test, but she stayed where she was, and I decided I might actually have an ice-cube's chance in hell with her.

I let her lead me to a café called El-Fishawi tucked down a narrow street off al-Badistan. It obviously catered to tourists, with Turkish coffee, various treats, and the wonderful, cool mint tea preferred in North Africa from Morocco to Egypt. On the way, I told her a little about myself. "My father was in the air force; he and my mother were killed in a plane crash when I was eight." Her head whipped around at that. "So yeah, I'm an orphan, too - I was shuffled around foster homes till I got fed up and took off." It was the _Reader's Digest_ version, but I had limited time.

"Wait, don't tell me," she said then. "You are here to save my soul with your American Jesus."

I snorted at that. "Not hardly. Not here to save your soul at all - just want to talk to you." Her glance was sharp, but our tea had arrived where we were seated at a small, rickety white table on the sidewalk. She sipped from the cup and closed her eyes in pleasure. Just as I had once, she'd learned to take delight in the small blessings between ugly necessities. A good book, a good cup of tea, a bit of chocolate cake . . . once, the possibility of such things had been all that had pulled me from moment to moment. "What Hank told you earlier is true," I said now. "We are here to take you to New York - if you want to come. We have a safe house there for people like us."

"'People like us,' eh? What makes you think I am anything like you? And there is nothing free in this world, American." She raised her tea cup. "This for your twenty minutes. An exchange. So tell me what you really want from me."

"Nothing. It doesn't work that way. Charles Xavier, who runs the house, is a mutant, too, and he has money - so he chooses to help other mutant kids who don't. It's that simple."

Yet even as I said it, I knew she'd just laugh at me, which she did. I would have laughed once, too. It had taken me more than three years to move from where I'd been to where I was now, and she certainly couldn't do it in twenty minutes. What on earth had I thought I might say to convince her in such limited time?

And suddenly, unexpectedly, I remembered the man in the silver jaguar - Erik Lehnsherr. He'd come to me on the streets of Alphabet City one night, offering to buy me dinner if I'd listen to him. I couldn't even remember now what he'd said while I'd eaten. I'd been too focused on the food, and I'd gone with him to a hotel afterward because he'd asked. I'd assumed that part of the deal. He'd been gentle with me, and paid me well with extra just for me, so when I'd seen him again, standing by his silver jag on the same corner where we'd first met, I'd approached _him_. And so it had gone until he'd left New York, leaving me with an address that had taken me to Charles Xavier's door.

But that had taken five months, not twenty minutes, and my futile attempts with the _Streetlight_ brochures should have taught me that no one changed his or her worldview overnight. People weren't usually ready to listen until at the end of their rope, and I remembered then, too, what Xavier had said to us in the Kavalla hotel. This girl was in danger of her life.

She didn't look it just now, sitting in the shade of an awning while sipping mint tea, watching people pass. But then, one rule of the street was never to show fear. Leaning across the table, I said softly. "Look, I don't know jack shit about you except that you're an orphaned runaway who makes a living as a thief. Maybe you like it, maybe you don't, but we were told you're in serious danger, and the way I see it, you have two choices. Stay here with the devil you know who might kill you, or try the devil you don't. I'm not asking you to trust us because I wouldn't trust us if I were you. I didn't trust the professor for months. Maybe not for years. I do now, but you'd be a lot stupider than I think you are if you took me at my word.

"I will tell you that he doesn't want you for his bed, and he doesn't want you to work the streets - either thieving, fucking, or selling. He'll give you a room, and food, and an education. What does he want back? Some respect, an effort on schoolwork, and some help around the mansion. He doesn't need anything else from people like us that he couldn't buy already. Why should he give a shit in the first place? Because rich people are like that. They have this whole _noblesse oblige_ thing going on. And he chooses to help mutants because _he's_ a mutant. Like you. Like me. Like the other three you saw."

I sat back then and spoke normally. "So pick your devil."

She eyed me for long minutes. "You may have been on the street, but you are not like most street kids."

"And you are?"

I had her there, hoisted on her own pride, and she snorted delicately. "My mother was a princess; she should have married a king."

"You resent her for marrying an American."

The bitter smile again. "I don't _like_ Americans."

"I don't like princesses."

She laughed. "You know, I may not like Americans, but I think I could like you." Then the smile fell off her face. "Unfortunately, I cannot take your offer. The devil I know is devil enough to find me, even if I fled to the States."

I thought of Jack O'Diamonds, and didn't try to deny that, but, "I think we can protect you. We have resources besides just cold cash and contacts."

She dropped her eyes, speaking softly, "He also has 'cold cash' and contacts, and is a mutant. He does not release anyone from his service, ever. He owns the Khan al-Khalili, and everyone here, to one degree or another. They call him the Shadow King. Nothing happens in this city without his knowledge and consent. Even now, I am certain that he knows I am talking to a stranger, and I shall pay for it later." Her lips quirked up and she touched the tea. "But I think it may be more useful than dangerous. I can prove my loyalty to him by refusing you." She stood. "Good-bye, American. I thank you for the tea."

No way was I giving up that easily. Standing, too, I said, "Wait." She let me approach her close enough to whisper. "Is he a telepath?" I remembered what the professor had said, and this must be the same man.

Her eyes were somber. "Yes."

"My professor's a telepath, too. That's how we knew those things about you."

"So you belong to him."

"No. He doesn't control me."

"How could you know?" she asked, genuinely curious.

"Because he lets me disagree with him."

"Perhaps he does so only that you might think yourself free?"

It was a suitably Byzantine rational but Machiavellian logic cut through it like a Gordion knot. "It's possible, but there's no motive. It wouldn't gain him anything."

"Gain need not always be concrete, American. What of the sheer pleasure in controlling? Power is its own reason."

"My name is _Scott_, not American," I snapped, because she had me. I'd been thinking like a Westerner - but this wasn't the West. Nonetheless, "Power may be its own reason, but it's also an addiction - and like any addiction, it creates tolerance. You have to have more, and pretty soon, the addiction becomes obvious to everybody. I know about addictions, and I think after living with the professor for three years, I can say he's not addicted to anything except his pipe and Earl Grey." Bending closer, I added, "And if there's anybody who can beat your Shadow King, it's Charles Xavier."

For just a moment, hope twisted her features, then she shook her head. "He only thinks so because he has not met Amahl Farouk."

"Or maybe Amahl Farouk thinks he's tough shit because he hasn't met the professor."

She laughed. "American arrogance."

"It's a crap shoot, Ororo. Charles Xavier, Amahl Farouk - one is going to win. And sometimes you have to gamble everything to be free, it you want freedom strongly enough. Die free or live a slave. I know what I'd choose."

"You have always chosen thus?"

She was mocking me and I clenched my jaw. "No - but if I had it to do over again, I'd rather die than go back."

"But it is my life, not yours, at risk for my freedom."

"It might be both our lives." And I realized that, if the professor failed, _it really might be. _Mine and Jean's and Hank's and Warren's. "We'd do our best to protect you. I sure as hell won't give you up, if Farouk comes knocking." I recalled a rainy night in the spring, three years ago, and the men with guns who'd broken into the mansion. "They didn't give up on me, once."

She seemed intrigued by that. "Who came looking for you?"

"The man who'd owned me, on the street." I saw no reason to go into detail. "The others fought him, and then they covered for me when he was dead."

Staring off across the sun-drenched roadway, she considered her options. Accept our offer, or turn us down, return to this Farouk, and hope her loyalty saved her life for whatever fatal sin she'd committed. Finally, she turned her dark eyes back to me and said simply, "No." But she'd also taken a pen out of her slacks and was scribbling on a paper napkin. "The Shadow King is my master," she went on. "I shall remain his loyal servant." Then she walked away.

I waited a moment before glancing down at the napkin. On it, she'd written (badly): _2 hours, 2 blocks west, leather stand with blue awning._

Using the napkin to wipe my mouth, I shoved it in a pocket to eliminate the evidence, then headed back to find the other three. As promised, they were down the coppersmith's alley and when I joined them, Jean asked, "No luck?"

I just handed over the napkin. "She's being watched," I said softly. "They'll be following her there, too, so I shouldn't try to meet her again. Jean, why don't you put that scarf over your head and meet her instead? We'll get a taxi and be ready to leave in a hurry, to get back to the plane."

Jean nodded, and we meandered about until the designated time, then Jean slipped off while Warren, Hank and I made our way to the edge of the Khan, hailing one of the ever-present cabs to wait. Fifteen minutes later, Jean arrived with the girl Ororo in tow. No one appeared to be following them, or even to notice as they climbed into our cab, though I was sure it was all marked. I just hoped this 'Shadow King' was preoccupied enough with the professor to keep him from interfering with our cab driver, as we were at the man's mercy to return us to the airport. All of us were tense, Ororo most of all. She had only a small bag with her and when she'd tumbled into the cab rear, Hank had asked, "That's all you have?"

"That is all that I need," she'd replied.

So we headed back to the airport, stopping on the way to pick up some food since we had no idea how long of a wait we'd have. We made sure to get some for the pilots, as well. Xavier hadn't taken the plane that Hank fondly called the "X-jet." It was a bit too conspicuous. Instead he'd borrowed Warren's family jet. Jean was distracted in the car, as if not fully aware of what was going on around her, which worried me, but she didn't say anything, so I wasn't sure if I should ask.

It was early evening by the time we'd returned to the plane; we ate, then sat waiting. Hank, Warren and Ororo played cards along with one of the pilots. I stayed in back with Jean, but we didn't talk. I'm not sure at what point I made the decision to go back for the professor - perhaps I'd made it as soon as he'd told us to leave him - but the longer we waited, the more certain I became that he needed me. Finally, I asked, "Jean, what's going on?"

"I'm not sure," she said slowly. "Some kind of . . . battle. I can feel it, or the echoes of it, like you'd feel waves from a disturbance in the water. I'm not reaching, but it's so powerful, I can't help but sense it."

"The professor?"

"Yes. And this other telepath, I'm sure."

"How long has it been going on?"

"Hours. Although it became really intense at sunset."

Nodding, I rose to pace. It was dark now, and I had no idea what the marketplace would be like after the sun went down. There were parts of New York one didn't enter after dark - and I'd worked some of them - but Europe wasn't as dangerous, at least, not Greece. I didn't know about Cairo, but I knew who did.

"Ororo."

She turned.

"I'm going after my professor. I need to know what you can tell me about this Shadow King, and where he can be found."

Hank, Warren and Jean all stared, but none seemed either surprised or inclined to argue. Only Ororo replied, "You are quite mad."

"Probably. Tell me how to find him."

So she did.

If they hadn't argued with my decision to go back, they all argued to go with me - except for Ororo, who had more sense, and no reason to play hero. I had more sense, too, but I wasn't leaving the professor out there alone. "No," I told them, "I'm going - just me. It's quickest, and has the best chance for success."

"You may need me," Jean said. "This Shadow King's a telepath."

"One way out of your league."

"You can't try to protect me, Scott, just because -"

"I'm not," I interrupted. "But they're more likely to need you here." I studied her face a minute. "You'll know if he dies, won't you?" It sounded harsh, but I was thinking in practical terms. She nodded, face anxious. "Good. Then if that happens, get the hell out of Dodge. I'll find a way to get home by another route." Not before I killed the Shadow King, however. But I didn't say that.

"The professor specifically told us not to follow him," Hank interjected, "and to go back to New York if he didn't return by sunrise."

"And you really thought I'd do that?"

Hank's smile was brief. "Not really. But I do think he expected me to make sure that you did."

"And are you going to try?"

It wasn't, quite, belligerent, but we held gazes a moment. Finally, he said, "No," and dropped his gaze. "Be careful."

"Absolutely." Grabbing my visor from the bottom of my backpack, I headed out.

* * *

><p>Ororo had said that the Shadow King could be found in the Bein al-Qasreen on the northern edge of the Khan. He owned a palatial, three-story, medieval brick building with fancy scalloped roof, arched windows, and palm trees framing the entry. I cased the place for a while, as anonymously as a white man could after dark in old Cairo, and was leaning up against the side of a building further down the street, when I felt a touch on my shoulder, and spun. Then my jaw dropped. It was Ororo. She was the last person I'd have expected to follow me.<p>

"What are you doing here?"

"Covering you."

"Where are the others?"

"I assume back at your plane." My baffled look must have asked my question for me, because she elaborated, "I told them that while I appreciated the concern, I had decided not to accept your offer of sanctuary after all, and left."

"They didn't try to _stop_ you?" I was astonished.

"Well, yes, they did try to talk me out of it, but as you yourself stressed, it is my choice."

I could figure out the rest on my own. She must have told them she was refusing our help so they wouldn't try to follow her and wind up with all five of us back in the shark's mouth. Clever. "But why?" I asked. "You told me I was crazy."

"You are." Then she paused a moment before continuing, "But you need me."

Pride pricked, I snapped, "I can take care of myself."

"Yes, I rather think that you can. As can I. Nonetheless, together we have a better chance than either of us would alone."

Which was true, but it still didn't answer why she was risking herself in the first place when she didn't have to. "I thought you didn't trust the professor? Why come with me to rescue him?"

She considered that, although she was watching the building, not me. After several minutes, she said only, "Because he lets you disobey. You said that he lets you argue with him, which might be a ploy, but he lets you _disobey_. No one disobeys the Shadow King and lives. So I have made my choice."

I nodded. She'd just told me quite a lot in four sentences, and I suddenly understood why Xavier had flown halfway around the world for this girl's sake when there were others closer to home who needed help, too. Needing help didn't necessarily mean that one would take it, as I'd discovered for myself in Alphabet City. But this girl was a survivor - like me. More than that, she felt compassion enough to help her helper, but without being a fool about it. As much as I loved Jean, Warren, Hank, and the professor, none of them was like _me_. Ororo was. And almost from the beginning we've understood one another with a glance and a minimum of words; she knows what I'm thinking, and why, and it's allowed us to work together seamlessly for seven years. In the field, it's Ororo who reads my mind, not Jean, and it began that night in Old Cairo.

"So you still think they're on the third floor?" I nodded to the building.

"Yes. The ground floor has a tea room, reception room, the front desk, and a banquet hall. Most of the employees will have left for the night, but there is much security, and as I warned you, we should avoid entering on that floor at all."

"The fire escape."

"Around back, yes, on the east. The second floor contains offices mostly, and there are electronic alarms, but I can neutralize those. That is why I came. I am the best thief in Cairo." It was a statement, not a boast, and I didn't doubt it for a minute. "There is an elevator, but we should not use it. There are two sets of stairs, east and west, and both will be guarded." I just nodded. "The third floor is entirely given over to his living quarters. There is a master kitchen, a dining room, a study, a _diwan_, the servants' quarters, and his bedchambers. I suspect he will be in the _diwan_."

"What's a _diwan_?"

"Barbarian." But she smiled in the dark. "It is a room to entertain guests, of course."

I snorted. "I wouldn't think he'd consider the professor a _guest_."

"Tsk, tsk. Hospitality, American. Even for the enemy."

"You people are so strange."

"And you are brutish and blunt."

"I thought you liked me blunt?"

"I find you refreshing. But you are still a barbarian."

I just laughed. "I'll take care of the guards."

She eyed me. "How?"

I tapped the side of my face near my visor. "I wear the headgear for a reason. My mutation is an optic blast. I could level this whole city block inside five minutes." She raised an eyebrow, but didn't question me. "So I'm not worried about the guards, but I am worried about Farouk. The professor put blocks in my head so Farouk can't sense me coming unless he's looking for me in particular, but you -"

"He cannot read my mind at all," she interrupted, and her smile was bitter. "That is why he will not let me go. He will never let me go because he cannot control me as he can the rest."

"You're a telepath, too?" Xavier hadn't told us what her mutant gift actually was.

"No. I cannot say why he cannot read me, but I am no telepath." She spat on the sidewalk.

"But you are a mutant?" She nodded. "What do you do?" In answer, she pointed up, and baffled, I followed the direction of her finger to the night sky overhead. "So?"

"Do you see the clouds?"

"Yeah?" Then it hit me. Clouds in Egypt were hardly common. "Oh."

"I have drawn them here slowly, so it is not so obvious. But I might have need of the lightning."

"Like Zeus, huh?"

"They called me a goddess in Kenya." Her smile was impish, then it fell away. "Or a witch, and stoned me."

"How about 'Storm Queen,' your highness?"

She laughed at that. "As you will, American." Then she asked, "Are you ready?"

"Let's roll."

She led me down alleys to the building's rear and we made our way up the fire escape like cats. On the second-floor landing, she pulled a set of lock-picks from a secret pocket somewhere and opened a window to let us in, then neutralized the alarms as promised. I was as impressed as hell; I'd never seen anyone work that fast. With the overcast, it was very dark, and I was grateful for the infrared that Hank had installed in my visor. We padded down a long hall decorated by fine, tooled brass lamps and tile mosaics. The offices were all dark and silent, but there was a light coming from somewhere around a corner, and we stopped at the edge. I could see her outline, and the tilt of her head in that direction, telling me that the guards would be there.

Low to the ground, I peered around the corner. Two men dressed in dark linen suits stood on either side of a door. It had to be the stairwell, but I couldn't read the Arabic sign. The guards had that look I'd seen before - the fish-cold eyes of men without a conscience. Or perhaps I just needed justification for what I was about to do in the name of necessity. I'd killed before, but accidentally. Now, I might have to kill intentionally.

I got off two shots before either even knew I was there, red beams slamming into each. They went down with barely a grunt. "Are they dead?" Ororo asked behind me, voice curious more than disapproving.

"I don't know," I answered. "I wasn't trying to kill, but I'm not an expert yet at the finer points." And I realized that I really didn't want to know if I'd killed them. Uncertainty was better.

She snorted and stepped out past me, approaching to peer at the downed men. Neither moved. "There will be more above," she warned.

"I know."

Opening the door, she led me upstairs.

Farouk's personal quarters were ostentatious to the point of gaudiness. Elaborate tapestries and thick carpets muffled sound while gilded lamps cast a low light on fine glass and ivory carvings. No one was about, but voices echoed in the distance along with a clatter of pots. Ororo led me down a short hall and paused at a corner, using sign language to indicate that there would be more guards beyond. I nodded. We'd been as quiet as mice, but so close to the heart of the Shadow King's lair, I couldn't be sure he wasn't aware of us. We sat and listened for a while, but nothing untoward happened, and finally we made our move. These guards went the way of the first two, but there was no door on this '_diwan_,' just an arched opening, and no hiding our presence now. We paced forward like a pair of lions, ready to attack.

Inside were just the two men, the professor in his wheelchair opposite Amahl Farouk. Overhead fans stirred the torpid night air, and the Egyptian was seated in what looked to be an iron-reinforced washtub more than a divan.

He was the fattest man I'd ever seen.

Focused entirely on each other, neither turned at our entrance - but they were aware of us. I could _feel_ the professor's mind like a palpable thing, yet he diverted no attention from Farouk. Of the titanic battle that Jean had said was occurring, there was no outward sign. The two might have been a pair of cats involved in a staring contest. Surreal.

Then Farouk spoke. "So this is your pup, Charles? And my lovely Ororo with him. Quite the pair they make - so fierce, like desert hawks. I wonder what kind of children they would produce? I shall enjoy mating them."

The threat might have been comical, like something out of a bad science-fiction movie, except for the cold dispassion in the voice that told me we were no more than livestock to a man like Farouk. I raised my hand to the trigger on my visor. "Die, you fat son of a bitch."

But my hand froze hard and I couldn't move a muscle. Xavier's blocks shattered like fragile glass and the Shadow King gripped my mind with a brute force I'd never imagined. I had no defense at all as he ripped me open_. __Deluded child_, he whispered inside my skull. _This is the man you consider your father? The man you would die for? See him for who he really is -_

And Farouk forced me to look at things I hadn't wanted to know, had spent three years avoiding, in fact.

Yet I had no chance to react because two things happened simultaneously. In the instant of Farouk's divided attention, Charles Xavier struck. I'd known he was a powerful telepath, but only because Hank, and later Jean, had said so. My confidence in his ability to defeat Farouk had been blind faith, and my presence here proof that my faith wasn't perfect. Yet now, still gripped by Farouk's brutal mind, I _felt_ the stunning shock of Xavier's power fall on him like a two-handed telepathic claymore. Farouk barely had time for surprise before he simply _ceased to exist_.

At the same time, I heard the blast of a gunshot, and my eyes - which were still open - saw Farouk's head explode and his fat body slump. Rich red and pale, spongy brain matter stained white linen robes and the wealth of cushions padding his chair.

Released, I collapsed to my knees. My ears were ringing, but I wasn't sure if that were from the gunshot or the residue of Farouk's mental grip. The gun fell to the floor beside me, right out of Ororo's nerveless fingers. "I killed him," she said, sounding almost surprised.

"No," Xavier said softly. "I did. You need not bear the weight of that, Miss Munroe."

"He's right," I gasped out. "Farouk was dead already."

"Scott -" Xavier said.

"Don't talk to me!" Farouk might be dead, but his poison remained, deep in my blood and stopping my heart. I looked up at the professor, and he could see that I _knew_. "You're no better than he was."

I got to my feet then, turned on my heel, and left the room. I didn't care what I met with below; I was too shocked to care about anything. In fact, I met no one at all. The entire building had been emptied, and in the street outside, Ororo's rain was still falling, but no one took notice of me. Xavier's handiwork, no doubt, but as long as I wasn't stopped, it didn't matter why. So I exited the building into the rain and the night, and just kept walking.

* * *

><p>I wandered down street after street in the Khan until I collapsed at a table outside a closed café - maybe the same one where I'd had tea with Ororo earlier that day. My head was reeling and my heart beat too fast. The rain clouds had disappeared, but I was still soaking wet and shivering in the cold, desert night air. I wanted a cigarette, yet had none. Pulling up my feet on the edge of the seat, I wrapped arms around them and rested my chin on my knees. Now that I'd had an hour, I wasn't quite as panicked, but I still had no idea what to do next, so I just sat there, stunned.<p>

Xavier found me, of course. When I heard the whine of his chair, I considered running, but then just sat and watched him motor around items in the alley as if it were an obstacle course. Once, I'd have leapt up to clear his path, but this time, I decided if he wanted to talk to me that badly, I'd let him find his own way. Of course, looking back, I realize those were probably the most difficult fifty feet he ever traversed - and not due to what blocked his route. It would have been so much easier to have sent a proxy - Jean, or Warren, or even Hank - yet in the end, he was the one I needed to talk to, not them. We had to have this out between the two of us alone.

When he'd gotten within ten feet of me, he stopped and waited. He offered no excuses, no explanations, just waited. There was no one else around and the empty alleyway felt eerie. Overhead, the sky glowed with the reflected light of the Mother of Cities.

After the weight of waiting had grown too heavy, I finally asked only, "Why?" There were a hundred other things I might have said, but in the end, it all boiled down to that one question that made all the difference in the world. "Why did you let him do it?"

Xavier knew I wasn't talking about Amahl Farouk. "Because I didn't know," he replied.

"You _had_ to know," I spat back. "You're a goddamn _telepath_!"

He sighed. It was a small sound in the dark, and then he dropped his eyes to frown at his hands folded loosely in his lap. "I loved him," he said simply. "I didn't want to think he could do such a thing, so I refused to admit my own suspicions." He looked up again and light from a distant lamp glittered off the dampness in his eyes. "I'm sorry."

I wanted to believe him, I wanted to believe that he honestly hadn't known, but the poison injected by Farouk was too venomous, and my own past too bitter. It was easier to believe in betrayal. "You were lovers. You never told me that. You never even told me you were a goddamn _fag_. After everything that happened to me, why didn't you fucking _tell_ me?" The words fell out of my mouth like stones - hard and murderous. I pelted him verbally. "You were his lover and he was fucking me and you fucking _let him do it. _You said you'd protect me against anyone who touched me - except for him. You didn't protect me from him because you loved him more. But I trusted you!"

The wetness in his eyes spilled over, sliding down his cheeks. "I didn't _know_, Scott. Yes, I ought to have known, but I didn't, and you have every right to be angry. And yes, I did love him more than you - then. I didn't know you yet.

"For you, this is simpler. For you, he was only 'the man in the silver Jaguar,' and for all he was kind in some respects, fundamentally, he used you - and you've healed enough now to recognize that. Once, you didn't, you know - but now, you do, and that's a good thing. Your anger _is_ justified. I'm not trying to excuse what he did; in fact, I'm not sure I'll ever really understand it. But to me, he was Erik - my friend and partner. That he could do such a thing - that he _would_ do such a thing . . . I'd not have credited it, and didn't want to believe it, even when the evidence mounted. But Scott, did you never ask yourself why Erik left New York?"

I pulled in my chin, but had to shake my head.

"He left because I ordered him to. I'd like to say it was entirely over you, but it wasn't. You were, nonetheless, the catalyst. I did find out, Scott. And when I found out, I confronted him about it. Erik claimed to have reasons for what he did. I didn't - and don't - agree with them, but like you, he was wounded as a boy. He lived through the Holocaust, and it marked him. He believed that he knew what it would take to get through to you, and that I, raised in privilege, couldn't know. He accused me of naïveté, of believing too much in human goodness, and said that I refused to do what was truly necessary for the greater good. I told him that if there are no good means, there can be no good end - but Erik believes the ends justify the means, or at least might excuse them.

"None of this was a new argument. We'd argued it for years, yet our disagreements were always ideological with nothing concrete to break us, nothing on which we couldn't compromise - until you. As I said, you were the catalyst. I told him I couldn't live with a man who would use a child in the belief it could save him. Erik said I wasn't willing to do what it took when the doing was ugly." The professor drew a shaky breath. "Perhaps he's right, but there are lines I will not cross." He drew another breath, then his shoulders sagged. "So. I should have recognized sooner what he was up to, but I didn't, because I loved him."

I'd listened silently through the whole thing, wanting to believe, but suspicious. Yet deep down, I'd known it all along - or at least suspected it. Just as he had with Erik, I hadn't wanted to see the truth, so I'd remained stubbornly blind to the big pink elephant in the mansion. Once or twice, Jon Bennett had tried to broach the matter with me, but I'd resisted because I'd needed a hero, needed one person in my life to be pure, to always know and do the right thing. It was the need of a child, the child I hadn't been able to be from the age of eight on.

I wasn't eight anymore. And Xavier wasn't perfect. And inside me, something collapsed, thundering into rubble, like a temple or an ideal. The professor wasn't a god.

"Why didn't you tell me all this at the beginning?"

He sighed for a third time. "You weren't ready to hear it, Scott. Had I told you that Erik Lehnsherr and I had lived together and shared a bed for thirty-five years, you might never have trusted me enough to stay. And you needed a safe place, and someone to trust. Think back to how you reacted when you discovered how Warren felt about you?"

"But I learned to accept it," I pointed out.

He nodded. "Yes, you did. But Warren wasn't the one you depended on to be your protector. I was. You had to feel that your boundaries would be respected absolutely. Counselors don't tell their patients all about themselves, Scott. It's inappropriate; the therapy isn't about us. But later . . . " He shook his head. "Later, you'd stopped being my patient, or even my student. You'd become my son." He looked up finally to meet my eyes. "I was afraid of losing you. I think I knew you'd find out the truth eventually, from sheer logic if nothing else, but a larger part of me hoped you never did."

I wanted to say that he'd lost me now for sure, except he hadn't. I was angry, hurt, disillusioned, but I still loved him - and I thought this might be how he'd felt when he'd found out Erik hadn't just been talking to me, down in Alphabet City. I also realized that my greatest anger wasn't that he'd trusted Erik. It was that he hadn't trusted me enough.

"I could have handled it," I insisted now. "Maybe not at first, not in the first weeks, or months, but yeah, I could have handled it. It would've been easier coming from you. Now . . . " I trailed off. "Now I don't know what I feel about it."

He nodded. "You need time, and space, I think. Your home is still your home, Scott. None of that has changed, nor will it. I chose you to be my heir, and if I haven't done entirely right by you, I'll hardly penalize you for that -"

"Professor -"

"Let me finish. You can go back to Greece with Jean, Hank and Warren, continue your vacation, or you can come home, whichever you prefer. I do need to take back Miss Munroe, but if you come with us, I'll certainly respect your need for distance, while you sort out how you feel -"

He droned on but I'd stopped listening. My anger was building again, born of frustration. And I wasn't at all sure why. He was trying to reassure me, give me space, do all the right things . . .

And then I understood why I was mad.

"Would you shut the fuck up for a minute?" I snapped.

Stunned, he closed his mouth and I just glared, saying finally, "Yeah, I'm pissed off! And I don't know what all I feel. But if I'm your _son_, then stop talking to me like I'm your freakin' patient!" He didn't reply, and after a moment, I went on, "Thank you." And strangely, I felt better for taking charge. "I don't know what I want to do about vacation. I'll talk to Jean. But I'd like to come back and help with Ororo. I understand her, I think." And unlike Lehnsherr, I believed I could reach her without taking advantage of her in the process.

I stood up, no longer feeling so much at a loss. It would take a while for me to sort it all out, and I did need space, and time, but I wasn't running like I had once from Warren. If I felt confused and angry, I didn't feel scared. "I told you I could handle it," I said. "I'm not a little boy any more, professor."

"I know," he said solemnly. "You have become a very special young man."

I smirked at his use of 'special.' I wasn't special, I was just a man - and I thought that maybe I could learn to accept that Xavier was, too.

* * *

><p>Jean and I did return to Greece for a week, though Hank went back to New York with Xavier and Ororo, and Warren elected to meet some friends in Istanbul. I think he welcomed the opportunity to withdraw gracefully while Jean and I found our footing as a couple.<p>

I talked to Jean a lot that week. She'd known Erik Lehnsherr, too. What she hadn't known was the role Lehnsherr had played in bringing me to the mansion, or that I hadn't realized he and Xavier had been a couple. I hadn't shared all the details of my past with her, even if she knew the gist of everything. Now her surprise - and sorrow and anger - gave me some perspective on Xavier's reaction. Jean and Erik had been close, and part of the reason she hadn't come to the mansion the fall I'd arrived wasn't just due to the demands of biochemistry class. Like a child of divorce, she'd been grieving over the split between her mentors.

So we both had a lot of anger to work through, and needed the week alone together to do it. We also needed the week to get used to one another, and I discovered a few things. First, sex really did improve with practice, and there were times I didn't flake out at all. But at other times, 'secondary impotence' was a problem. Jean was always patient, content to hold and be held, but I felt guilty. I was broken, and she could do better than me, but when I said as much, she flew into a towering rage just as she had the morning after our first encounter. "What gives you the right to decide what I 'deserve,' Scott Summers!"

Second, I discovered that I wasn't ready yet to share the same room with someone, day after day. I might crave companionship, but paradoxically, I also craved space. So when we returned to Westchester, we maintained our separate rooms, and if I did eventually move in with her - or she moved in with me - by then, I had an office that was mine alone. I'll probably always need space like that, and she understands. Sometimes I think the fact we're still not married after so many years is a factor of the same need. New York doesn't recognize it, or we'd be common law by now. It's not that I don't love her, or can't make a commitment, it's just the label _married_. It feels trammeling. In every way that matters, I belong to her, and she knows it. The kids even call her "Mrs. Summers" in jest - which annoys her. When we do marry, she won't take my name, and I don't expect her to. I like it that she won't. We're partners, not possessions.

In any case, one morning not long after our return, Jean had a long conversation with Xavier. After that, matters were all right between them, but I wasn't ready yet to talk to him, and she didn't force me to. Instead, I had a long conversation with Jon Bennett, who pointed out a few things.

"You're angry he's gay, aren't you?"

"I don't know," I replied. "I never really thought about it."

"Guy's sixty and never married, and you never thought about it?"

"He's in a wheelchair."

"Oh, come on! Don't shit with me. I've asked about it, your case worker asked about it - don't tell me it never crossed your mind."

We were silent a minute, then I asked, "Why is it that everybody around me turns out to be fucking _gay_? First Warren, now the professor. Am I some kind of fag magnet?"

"I thought Warren was bi-?"

"What's the freakin' difference?"

"That he likes girls and guys both?" I snorted in reply to that, but Jon pressed on. "Hank gay?"

"No."

"Jean?"

"Of course not!"

"Colleen? Your three dormmates at Yale?"

"No!"

"So of what, eight people you deal with on a fairly regular basis, one's bi and one's gay? That's a little higher than the statistical average, but not by much."

I crossed my arms over my chest, irritated with him for being reasonable. "Some of the guys who bought me on the street weren't much younger than Xavier."

"Ah. _Now_ we're getting down to it. You worry it's something about you. You called yourself a fag magnet."

I glared at him. "Well what the hell would you think if you were me? First, I get pulled into the life, then as soon as I get out, both my best friend and the man who considers me his son turn out to like dick! Wouldn't that make you freakin' _wonder_?"

He leaned forward like a setter at point. "Wonder what?"

I was silent a good while, clawing at the seam of my jeans, then playing with the rubber sole of my tennis shoe. Finally I said, "I wonder why I'm more attractive to men than to women."

"You worry that makes you less of a man."

"Yeah."

"You afraid of being a woman?"

"No, it's not that." And it wasn't. "It's not being more like a woman - it's being less of a man."

"Asexual."

"Yeah, maybe."

"But before, you seemed to want that."

I shifted, suddenly uncomfortable. "I don't know that I wanted it - I just felt like it."

"And how do you feel now?"

I frowned and shifted again.

"How do you feel since Jean, Scott?"

"Like a man." She made me feel very much like a man, and I wasn't sure I should like feeling that way as much as I did.

But he only nodded. "What women want, and what men think women want, aren't always the same, and our pissing contests are usually for us, not them." He paused, then added, "I think you're more of the alpha male than you realize." Surprised, I jerked my head up, and he continued, "You don't back down, and you don't like to lose. You're tenacious and aggressive. Those are all alpha-male characteristics. You just had the bad luck to be born pretty."

Which made me laugh, because it was true.

Later, Bennett circled around to an even more tender point: "You know, the fact that in three and a half years, you never asked about the connection between Xavier and Lehnsherr ought to tell you something."

"Like what?"

"Like maybe you weren't _ready_ yet to ask about it."

"So you think Xavier was right not to tell me?"

"I think those decisions are rarely either-or. I think maybe he wasn't sure himself exactly what role he had with regard to you - therapist, teacher, or foster father - but even as a foster father, parents don't tell their kids everything, nor should they. Yet sometimes they do need to tell them difficult truths - it's just a matter of figuring out when. It's like talking to kids about sex. You ever heard the old joke about the kid who came home and asked his mom where he came from?"

"No."

Sensing the opportunity for a story, Bennett crossed his ankle over his knee and leaned back in his chair. "Okay, so - this first-grader comes home from school, and he says, 'Hey Mom, where'd I come from?' So Mom runs to get her _A Doctor talks to 5-8 Year Olds_ book and starts explaining the birds and the bees. Kid listens, all quiet-like, then when she's done, he says, 'Yeah, okay - but I just wanted to know where I came from. I mean, Lucy comes from Chicago and Bobby comes from St. Louis. So where'd I come from?'"

I had to laugh, despite the seriousness of the conversation.

"Sometimes the best measuring stick for what kids are ready to hear is what questions they ask. You didn't ask, Scott. And maybe you weren't ready to hear the answer, you know? Sometimes we put off asking too long, but sometimes we're just not ready yet to hear. I can't tell you which of those it was for you, but it's a fair question to ask _yourself_. Healing is a process, just like growing up, and we can't expect to run before we walk."

So I spent the rest of the summer thinking about what I'd been ready to hear. Meanwhile, the professor and I had spoken maybe 100 words to each other since I'd gotten back, and most of those had been about Ororo.

She was settling in faster than I had, perhaps because I was there, or perhaps she was just less wounded than I'd been. But watching her learn to trust us gave me some perspective on what I'd been like - and why the professor might have made the decisions he had. I sure didn't dump my past on her. We did talk about the night I'd accidentally killed Jack O'Diamonds, because she was struggling with the fact she'd been willing to kill Amahl Farouk, even if she hadn't actually done so. But I didn't tell her about my time on the street; she didn't need to deal with my shit and hers, too.

I'd healed enough at last to become the healer - and surprised myself to find I was good at it, at least with her. She knew I'd tell her exactly how I saw it. There have been kids since who came to the mansion needing more gentleness, and now _Ororo_ is the one who gives it, or Jean. But other kids need me, and I've become, as an adult, the protector I once needed as a child. Maybe it sprang originally from a desire to rescue my 'younger self,' but these days, it's not about me. And when new kids come to the mansion, I'm the one who takes them on a tour, and we always walk past the English-style hedge maze, and I tell them about the gazebo at its heart where they can go and not be seen from the mansion, just as Xavier once confided that fact to me. Trust begins by being trusted, and if a few abuse my trust - most don't.

It was a memory of trust that led me finally to seek out the professor one afternoon just before it was time for me to go back to New Haven. He was in his rooms, sitting by the fireplace, and the door was open, as were the windows. The air was crisp with the smell of early fall, though it was only late August, and I knocked on the wooden lintel. He glanced up, surprise washing his face. "Scott? Come in, come in." And he put down the book he'd been reading - John Irving's_ The Cider House Rules_. It had been my birthday present to him earlier that spring, a story about an orphaned boy raised by the orphanage's physician - how the boy had left to find himself, then come back to become physician in his own turn. Ironic, to find him reading _that_ book, right now.

Entering, I took my old chair and pulled out my pipe to fill it. He had his already, and for a while, we didn't speak, just smoked together. But finally, I said, "I wasn't ready to hear. I thought I was, but I wasn't. So maybe it's just as well it happened like it did."

He didn't reply for a long minute, then admitted, "I should have told you sooner. I considered it last summer, before you left for college, but it seemed you had enough to deal with."

And I nodded. Hell Summer wouldn't have been a good time, no question.

"Christmas holiday didn't seem right, either," he added.

"And I was away for most of it. Then I took off to Greece right after the spring semester was over." And then Cairo had happened.

We were silent again then, and when I'd finished my pipe, we settled down over his puzzle table, discussing small things - the trail rental business, which had picked up that summer, my fall schedule at Yale, and Ororo's education. The girl could barely read. Of course, she'd never had the opportunity to learn, but bookworm that I was, I couldn't imagine reaching almost sixteen - the same age I'd been when I'd first arrived - without learning to read. Reading had been my salvation, but we all have our own coping mechanisms. Books were mine. Plants are hers. The woman can grow anything, I think.

Midway through the evening, I finally got around to asking, "How did you meet - you and Erik Lehnsherr?"

He hesitated, and I wasn't sure if he wanted to tell me, but then he began, "I was seventeen, and touring Europe with my mother - our last vacation together before I was drafted into the service for the Korean War . . ."

* * *

><p><strong>Notes:<strong> Yes, the title references a prominent line in _The Cider House Rules. _Many thanks to Elouisa for her assistance with information about Cairo, and to Naomi and Lesani, as always.


	20. In These Hallowed Halls

A moment comes in every man's life when he must either transcend his past, or become the victim of it.

It was the tail end of summer and the school year at Xavier's had just begun, but now I was a teacher, not a student - a fact that still dimly amazed me, although it had been twelve years since that September afternoon when a skinny boy in black leather pants and a muscle shirt had rang the doorbell at a Westchester mansion. My own students wouldn't have recognized my younger self, which is a good thing. I've become respectable in khaki and cardigans. And perhaps it's sheer chance that the most fortunate changes in my life have all occurred under the light of the Dog Star, which is supposed to be ill-omened. Still, I suppose in the larger sense, that fall wasn't an auspicious time to be a mutant, with congress back from recess and Senator Kelly's Mutant Registration Act on the block. If it passed, by 2006, I'd be carrying a little card with my picture on it - and a danger rating.

Jean had been asked to speak before the Senate - give a presentation on mutancy. To me, she's just Jean of the irrepressible smile and unexpected temper, but to the rest of the world she's Dr. J. E. Grey, M.D., Ph.D., among the leading U.S. experts on mutant evolution even though she's not yet thirty-five. She publishes articles with such titles as, "Genetic-environmental Interactions Leading to the Activation of the X-Factor Gene," and "X-Factor Positive: a multifactorial inheritance hypothesis." She wears little square glasses and fashionable suits under her white lab-coats. But she still laughs if I tickle her ribs and still gets excited over Christmas lights. And when she's nervous, she chews her hair.

"Stop it," I told her now, pulling the lock out of her mouth and smoothing it down.

She fluttered the fingers of her free hand in frustration. The other gripped a folder with the CD for her PowerPoint presentation, and her laser-pointer. "I can't help but think this is all an exercise in futility. They've already made up their minds."

"No. Even if the act passes, this isn't futile. If you change just two minds today - that's two minds. The Mississippi River starts as a trickle in northern Minnesota."

She grinned briefly. "Exercising your philosophy degree, Mr. Summers?"

"He just likes to sound profound," said a familiar deep voice, and we both turned, Jean with an excited squeak, throwing her arms around Warren.

"You came!"

"Wouldn't miss it." He let her go, then turned to smile at me, but I could see the smile was a bit forced and his eyes were tired. Jean had spent the past month working on this paper, and Warren had spent it on the phone with his Yale cronies from The Order of Skull and Bones, trying to gain support from the pillars of government, business, and media who make up its alumni - and who could put pressure on their Congressmen. Normally, such privileged lobbying disgusted me, but in this case, I was grateful for it.

His senior year at Yale, Warren had been invited to join The Order, and we'd discussed the matter before he'd accepted. He'd been reluctant, because we both knew I'd never be asked. It was the most exclusive club at Yale, still a preserve of wealth and conservatism at a college otherwise famed for its liberality. That Warren would be tapped had been, perhaps, predictable; just as predictable as the fact he hadn't wanted to accept, because he dislikes such exclusivity. I'd convinced him to. A strategist even then, I'd thought it might prove useful in the future.

And it had.

Just now, Warren gave Jean another hug and kiss, then released her so she could go backstage in preparation. The session was about to begin and he and I needed to find seats in the viewing balcony above. The professor was somewhere on the left, while we took seats on the balcony right, the better to spread out our observation.

We still had a few minutes before the session was called to order. "Do I need to think about moving to Canada?" I asked him - only half joking.

His lips thinned, though he didn't look at me. "I don't know, Scott. I'm doing my best -"

"Hey - I know." I gripped his shoulder. "Not a complaint. We're damn lucky to have you."

He glanced over at me. "You make it sound like I'm a sympathetic outsider." It was pained.

I squeezed the shoulder again, then let go. "Definitely not that." Reaching under my glasses, I rubbed at my closed eyelids. "So what are people telling you?"

"That they're scared."

"Of _what_?"

"Don't be dense, Scott. People worry about everything from mutant criminals to mutant terrorists."

"Terrorists . . ." I snorted. "People are goddamn _paranoid_ since 9/11."

"Maybe. But you have to admit it's not entirely unjustified. Imagine the damage you could do if you weren't on the side of the angels."

Behind my glasses, I frowned, unhappy to be reminded of the fact I was an unwilling weapon. "Any man with a gun is dangerous, War. That's why we have _cops_. Instead of alienating us all, maybe they should try asking us to help police our own."

He frowned, but didn't look at me. "You're thinking about black leather suits in a basement, aren't you?"

"For now, it's all we've got."

He might have said more, but the vice president had risen to call the Senate to order.

Jean wasn't the first to speak. In fact, she was scheduled last. They had a variety of others, from a psychologist to the mother of a boy who'd been accidentally killed during another mutant boy's manifestation, which was apparently the ability to create earthquakes. Part of a house had collapsed on the kid, and while I grieved for his mother, couldn't imagine what she was feeling, I _could_ imagine what the mutant boy was feeling. I knew what it was like to kill accidentally; I knew what it was like to live in fear every day that one wrong move could be deadly for someone else. But. "Registering mutants isn't going to stop accidents during manifestation," I muttered to Warren under my breath.

His eyes drifted my way, though he didn't turn his head. The high, overhead lights glittered in his golden hair. "Registration is just the first step," he said softly. "If it passes, they're already lining up a law to permit X-gene testing in the womb during amniocentesis."

"Abortion's a sin unless it's a mutant?"

"It'd present the evangelicals with an interesting theological quandary, wouldn't it?"

"Too easy," I replied. "We have to be considered human for it to be murder. Hunting Indians was perfectly legal once; they just classified them as 'wild animals.'"

Warren snorted. "Well, if they can get the amniocentesis check passed, then they're planning to require genetic testing before visas are issued to resident aliens. Fetuses and foreigners make easy targets. Once all that's in place, they'll start pushing for general genetic testing of all U.S. citizens, particularly children and teens. They'd have support for that from groups who don't give a flying fuck about mutants."

"Let me guess - insurance companies?"

"Hole in one. But that works in our favor. We can remind people that compulsory DNA testing could have much wider applications, resulting in higher insurance rates for those with certain genetic predispositions - diabetes, cancer, heart disease - or even denial of coverage altogether."

"They'd be assured it wouldn't be used for that. Privacy policies."

"Sure. But once the tests are made and the DNA reports a matter of public record, they can't be _un_done. If they're going to play the fear game, we can, too."

"I hate the fear game."

"But it works, Scott. The unfortunate truth is that it works better than education or positive campaigns. Why do you think politicians are so fond of it?"

"I hate politics, too."

He snorted for a second time, but Jean was being introduced, so he didn't reply. Her presentation went just fine - right up until the end. She's a scientist, not a lawyer, and debate isn't her thing. Robert Kelley, who'd introduced the act, just used her as a convenient springboard for his now-familiar rhetoric.

And people were clapping. They'd been polite but silent through her presentation, yet for him, they clapped, and her expression had turned angry and disgusted. I'm sure mine mirrored it, arms crossed and chin tucked in. On the other side of the balcony, I could see the professor glancing around, watching people, as did the senators below, measuring support for or against the act.

And it was while I was studying the observers that a particular movement on the opposite side caught my eye - a man dressed in a long coat, putting on a hat and heading for the exit.

I blinked, doubting my eyes. It had been twelve years and my memory might be wrong, but the gestures, the ramrod posture, even that beak of a nose . . . they were his. And if ever there was a place and time he might show up, this would be it.

"I've gotta go," I said to Warren, already moving.

"What? Why?"

"I'll tell you later. Find Jean, stay with her. I'll be there as soon as I can."

"Scott - !"

But I was halfway to an exit.

I didn't find him immediately, and feared I might have missed him entirely if he'd left by a side exit. But finally I saw him at a distance down a wood-paneled hallway, his back to me, the edges of his dark coat flapping in the wind of his passage. "Erik Lehnsherr!" I called.

The click of his shoes on tile ceased and he stopped to turn, his expression curious. I trotted forward until about ten feet separated us. "Do I know you?" he asked.

He'd been a handsome, dignified man once, and still was, but now his age was showing. Like the professor, he was past seventy, though he hadn't turned sixty the first time we'd met. Nonetheless, compared to me, he hadn't changed at all.

"You might recognize me better with longer hair, kohl around my eyes, leather pants, and fuck-me boots."

His reaction to that was an utter bafflement I didn't think feigned, and I wondered how many other boys in leather pants he'd bought.

"I'm Scott Summers."

At this, his expression altered subtly but profoundly, the slight frown smoothing, his chin going up and his shoulders back, and he looked me over from crown to toe. "I hear you're teaching now for Charles."

"Math," I replied. "Sometimes shop."

"The shop instructor with a Yale degree in philosophy. How quaint."

"You don't approve."

"I think you're wasting your talent, yes."

"Wasting my talent helping kids? Well, fuck you and your intellectual elitist crap."

"I hardly said it was wrong to teach, now did I? I said you were wasting _your_ talent. Those are not the same thing."

"So what do _you_ think I should be doing?"

"Writing. You wrote brilliant editorials for the _Yale Herald_. You wanted to be a journalist and a philosopher. You wanted to change the world. Where is that boy, now? You were special once. Now you teach _high school_. You've grown comfortable. You fear exposure. You've forgotten how to _risk_."

"You have no fucking idea what I risk. As for exposure, it's a little late to worry about that. I've never hidden that I'm a mutant. Anyone looking could find it out, and if this damn act passes, I'll have to register. What about you? Which of us is really the one hiding?"

His lips tipped up. "Ah, Scott. Why don't you simply ask the question you came to ask?"

"How do you know I want to ask anything?"

"Because you expended no little effort to find me."

My jaw clenched. "All right. It was wrong, what you did to me all those years ago, and you're smart enough to know it. So why?"

"Do you want an explanation or an apology?"

"Both."

He shook his head and I watched shadows catch on the craggy planes in his face. There was still no one in this hallway. "'Why,' is very simple, and you can already answer it for yourself. When I met you, you weren't ready yet to be saved. You trusted neither me nor my motives - nor did you have any reason to. It required time."

"Time, yes. That, I'll buy. But it didn't require _fucking_ me."

He drew himself up a little straighter and crossed arms over his chest. "Sex was the medium of exchange with which you were familiar. I had to win your confidence before I could bring you to Charles, and I had to do it as quickly as I could. I think you know just as well as I do that you were far too clever, and too cynical, to trust easily. And I had no idea how much time was left before your mutation manifested. Charles had told me it could happen any day."

"I didn't manifest for almost a _year_, you ass."

"But we didn't know then that such would be the case. To borrow a cliché, the clock was ticking. So I spoke to you in a language you were ready to understand. I became a 'good john,' so that you would trust me faster without suspecting my motives. After all, you thought you already knew what my motives were. You still think you know."

"A _good man_ would have done better than a good john."

"Double meanings, Scott?"

"Swords have two edges, and both cut."

"Ah - aphorisms, too. Tell me, my philosophy student, do you believe in ontological truth?"

I turned my head, just slightly. He was going Socratic on me, which could be dangerous. "Maybe. But if there's ontological truth, we can't know it."

"So - truth is relative, and ethics are situational. Yes, as I recall your editorials, that was always your position."

He'd read them? I resisted feeling flattered. "That doesn't mean I think there aren't boundaries - lines in the sand. You crossed them."

"'The boundary is the best place for acquiring knowledge.'"

He was quoting Paul Tillich at me, just assuming I'd recognize it - and I did, which annoyed me that he could guess so well what writers would have appealed to me. "You're playing at eristics, Erik. I'm not impressed. Stick to the point, don't twist it to sound clever."

"I wasn't. The point is that the boy you were couldn't have gone from Alphabet City to Westchester County in a single step, yet I had to get you there as fast as I could. My choice was not ideal, but it worked - the best option available at the time. You've lived on the street enough to know that ideals are what we have - but not the world we live in. As you said, there may be an ontological truth, but we can't know it. And sometimes we must choose the lesser of two evils."

He smiled, very faintly. "You wanted an answer. That's my answer - and my apology, as well. But I can't give you regrets because looking at you now, seeing the man you've become, I don't regret for a moment what I did."

I just stared. "And you think I'm going to forgive you for that?"

"Not at all. Nor did I ask you to."

That wasn't the answer I'd expected, though I should have. And if I were no less angry than I'd been when I'd first spotted him, and no more inclined to accept what he said, I suddenly felt _sorry_ for him, even though I knew he'd despise my pity. Yet there was a point at which intelligence betrayed wisdom, and he'd passed it.

"You told me once that I reminded you of someone," I said. "Do you remember that?" He just nodded. "Who was it?"

I'd thought he'd say the professor, but he didn't.

"Me," he said. "You reminded me of me."

For almost a full minute, I didn't respond. We just looked at each other. Finally, I said, "But I'm not you." And turning on my heel, I walked away.

* * *

><p><strong>Notes:<strong> In the comics, Scott's degree was in journalism, but as Yale doesn't have a journalism degree, I settled for philosophy, with experience on one of the (many!) student-run publications. Scott and Erik use some philosophical jargon in their debate, so quickly: onotological truth is absolute truth; aphorisms are (sometimes cliched) truisms; a formal apology is an explanation/defense, not "I'm sorry"; eristics is the art of argument aimed at winning; and Socratic method is question and answer, designed to lead the student to a new revelation. The Order of Skull and Bones is a real club, the most prestigious at Yale, and its alumni include both George W. Bush and John Kerry.


	21. Endnotes

Categorizing this novel is a bit tough for me, but of all the stories I've written, I think this one is closet to my heart - not because I've lived through anything like what Scott survived, but because it allowed me to explore some things I've wanted to explore, and meet some challenges. It's a dark story, but it's not a tragedy by any means - quite the opposite. Some might want to characterize it as 'hurt-comfort,' yet in my experience, hurt-comfort is typically romance where trama of some sort becomes the means to bring two characters together. Sometimes it's well-used, sometimes it's very poorly used, but _Special_ isn't a romance. It's a coming-of-age story about fathers and sons, a story of healing. Scott's trauma isn't a means to anything; it **IS** the story. And while yes, Jean's in it, and yes, Scott and Jean do wind up together, that's just part of the larger healing process, and Jean takes a backseat in this tale to _Charles Xavier_ - who's the real secondary protagonist. _Special_ is far more a story about Scott and Xavier than Scott and Jean. But most of all, it's a story about _Scott_.

The Scott of _Special_ emerged of a piece. Sometimes there's not a clear linear direction for how you reach a characterization. In retrospect, it was a collection of observations that suddenly GELLED. In the film, Marsden played Cyclops with a certain . . . cockiness, an edge of 'flip' that I'm not sure even he realizes. I once had the chance to ask him how he saw Cyclops, what his perceptions of the character were, and from his answer, it seemed clear that he thinks of Cyke as the boy-scout who toes the line, so I suspect that cockiness is more _Marsden_ leaking through than an intentional choice. Nonetheless, it's one of the more interesting aspects of the film character, contributing complexity to what would otherwise be an unbearably 2D tertiary character. Add to that the way Scott dressed in the film - a choice of the wardrobe department, I realize, but in the 'reality' of the film world, it was curious. He was _always_ covered up, even when other characters weren't and one might have expected him to be _hot_ in all those clothes. It was as if he didn't want to show his body, and the choice of staid clothing style was notable, as well (and in X2, it's even _worse_). The way he moved combined ease and discomfort, as if he weren't entirely sure of his body. He switched back and forth between a fluidity that was almost _sauntering_, then a brittleness that seemed doll-like. Again, I think this is more of Marsden the person leaking into a character with which he's not yet entirely comfortable, but as a writer, I could USE that - and did. The whole package is of someone who wants to appear to be something he isn't . . . his movements and demeanor don't _quite_ match up. In _Accidental_ I took that in one direction, as the popular boy who grew into someone else. But in _Special_, I used his comic background to create something quite different.

Scott's personality in the comics has all the hallmarks of an abused child, and I wanted to explore that. Simplifying hugely, there are two basic ways for such kids to develop. One is to believe they really are 'bad' and become the 'problem' child (did you know that, in Florida at least, 98% of inmates arrested for _violent_ crimes were abused children?). But the other way these kids develop is to try to prove they're NOT bad by struggling to become 'good enough.' There's a constant need to please, measure up, shoulder responsibility, tow the line . . . sound familiar? And under it all, a sense of insecurity. I've always been struck by the dual nature of Scott's personality. There's Cyclops, and then there's Scott Summers, and they're rather different people. Cyclops is a natural leader, but _Scott_ is very insecure. In the comics, Scott's origin has varied from no time on the street to being used by Jack Winters (Jack O'Diamonds) for cons and theft. [Like many of the older comic characters, after 40 years and multiple writers, the canon is sometimes mutually contradictory.] None of it was as dark as what I gave him, but the comics did have to abide by the comic code. The closest background to _Special_ was a mini released in the late '90s called "Children of the Atom," but even that could only skirt reality, and it wasn't a particularly good series anyway. Yet there is this recurring theme that Scott's foster years weren't a pretty picture, and combined with his comics personality, I thought it all pointed to some real trauma.

For Scott's situation in _Special_, I wanted to blend his time since the plane accident with a basically healthy childhood from before. So while he may be deeply wounded, the core of his personality, formed in his earliest years, is stable. This is important, because it means he _did_ learn both trust and self-sufficiency at the right points in his developmental process. If those had been interrupted, then his healing process would have become _much_ more complex. I wanted to give him something inside to reach for. My Live Journal contains an entry with a more complete discussion of the use (and abuse) of trauma in fanfic. I can't post a link here (FF-net won't accept external links in uploaded stories/files), but you can find it in my FF-net profile, along with the (very kind) review by Eric Burns of _WebSnark_.

So that's my basic thought process for the Scott of _Special_. In addition to the themes of hope and recovery and rebirth, I'm also playing with themes of 'actual' and 'apparent,' the self one _is_ versus the self others expect, and the tension between individual personality and social class. None of the characters in _Special _are quite what one would expect, even while they're shaped by their environments.

_Special: the Genesis of Cyclops_ provides the background-origin used for the characters in my post-X2 novel, _Grail_ (just as _An Accidental Interception of Fate_ provided it for _Climb the Wind_). So if you liked _Special_ and want to know 'what happened next' (more or less), then I'd direct you to _Grail_, which also - somewhat ironically - rescued me mentally from the Big Pile of Fail that was _X3_. I suppose you can call it my version of _X3_. For the curious, were _Special _to be rendered into print, it would yield a novel of roughly 400 pages.

**Acknowledgments:**

A number of folks have helped me out during the writing of _Special_, each acknowledged in the individual notes for each story. But here at the end, as always, I'd like to thank Naomi for her patience at editing. I'd also like to thank Lesani, who read and commented on probably 2/3rds of these entries before they ever saw the light of day. Although I do, myself, have a clinical background, and although I'd read plenty of books on healing from sexual abuse (both before this and in preparing for writing this), my own area of clinical training and experience is in bereavement counseling. Yet every area of counseling develops its own unique quirks, insights, rhythms and recognitions, so I turned to Lesani for additional advice and critique, since her area of study and clinical experience is _in_ the field of sexual abuse therapy. These stories would have been far less without her generous assistance (including several emails and even a few telephone conversations).


End file.
